JEWISH HISTORY AND 
POLITICS 

IN THE TIMES OF SARGON AND 
SENNACHERIB 



gin Inqutrg 

INTO THE HISTORICAL MEANING AND PURPOSE OF THE PROPHECIES 

OF ISAIAH 



By SIR EDWARD STRACHEY, Bart. 



SECOND EDITION, REVISED, WITH ADDITIONS 



W. ISBISTER & CO. 
56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 
1874 



Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those 
The top of eloquence ; statists indeed, 
And lovers of their country, as may seem ; 
But herein to our Prophets far beneath, 
As men divinely taught, and better teaching 
The solid rules of civil government 
In their majestic, unaffected style, 
Than all the oratory of Greece and Eome. 
In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt, 
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so, 
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat ; 
These only with our Law best form a king. 

Paradise Regained, iv. 353. 



Deinard-Schifi 



PREFACE. 



It is now many years ago that, by the advice of my friend 
Mr. Maurice, I proposed to myself to make the science of 
Politics my study. In order to give Jewish History and 
Politics their proper place in that study I chose the period 
of which* this Volume treats ; and the reader is here 
offered the results of my inquiry. The present edition 
has been revised throughout, and considerable additions 
have been made to it 

This period — the last half of the eighth century b.c. — 
is of characteristic importance in the history of the Jewish 
nation, which had now reached its highest point of civiliza- 
tion, and was come into contact with the Assyrian Power, 
which was overwhelming the Eastern world. Its social 
and religious condition, and its politics, home and foreign, 
are known to us through the contemporary discourses of 
the Prophets, the political and religious advisers of the 
kings and people. A new and interesting light is thrown 
upon it by the Assyrian Inscriptions, which show us, as 
facts, many events and circumstances of which, without 
them, we could only infer the existence. And the genius 
of Isaiah, the greatest of the prophets of that or any time, 
has called out a series of learned and thoughtful commen- 
taries on his writings, such as are hardly available for the 
student of any other book. 



PREFACE. 



Taking then each of Isaiah's prophecies in succession, I 
have brought it into connection with all that we know, 
from itself, or from other sources, of the events to which 
it refers, as well as of the internal state of the nation, and 
of its relations with other countries. And thus I have 
endeavoured, in a manner which should not be the less 
complete because it is gradual and somewhat informal, to 
take in the whole subject proposed in my title-page. 

In thus reading the Book of Isaiah I have, to the best 
of my ability, handled it by the method of our modern 
historians of Greece and Eome, and treated it as they — 
with thorough freedom and thorough reverence — treat the 
classical books. Wherever the method led I have fol- 
lowed ; and if I have found differences as well as resem- 
blances between the Jewish and the classical literatures, 
this is not the consequence of a difference of method, but 
of facts. Thus, I have recognized, for I should think it 
unscientific criticism not to recognize, the fact that, while 
no one now worships the national gods of Greece or Eome, 
a large part of the most educated and most thoughtful 
men in modern Europe still believe in, and worship the 
national God of the Jews. And again : — the Jewish, the 
Greek, and the Roman histories all tell us of national 
growth and national decay. The patriots and the philo- 
sophers of Greece and Rome could find no remedy for 
the decay : they admitted at last that there was nothing 
left for the state but military despotism, and nothing in 
religion but an organized superstition without faith — 
which indeed would do nothing towards restoring the 
life of the nation, but might make its inevitable death 
more gradual, or less convulsive, than if they continued to 
try successive forms of anarchy in the hope of regaining 
freedom. But the Jewish teachers maintained that there 
was a law of national life powerful enough to control and 



PREFACE. 



vii 



reverse the action of the law of death ; and that it would 
eventually assert and establish itself, if not in the Jewish 
nation yet in future times and other nations. And this 
belief of the ancient Jew is still held by many a modern 
political philosopher and practical statesman : which fact, 
and what it involves, I have also recognized. 

The Text of Isaiah — the Authorized Version revised 
— is given at the end of the Volume. The question of 
the Authorship of the Book I have treated at some 
length. I consider it to be still far from settled, and 
that it needs more and other discussion than it has yet 
received. 

Of the Assyrian Inscriptions of the period under con- 
sideration I have given, in the proper places, all that is 
yet translated, and that is of importance to my subject. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Greek Orator. — The Hebrew Prophet. — The modern Preacher.-— 
Schools of the Prophets. — The Book of Isaiah. — Its arrangement. — 
Its unity. — Hypothetical and positive criticism . . 1 

CHAPTEE II. 

The Book of Isaiah. — Its title. — Date of Chapter i. — Prophetic imagi- 
nation. — Hebrew oratory rhythmical. — Parallels in other nations, — 
Contents of Chapter i. — Times of Uzziah and Jotham. — Forms and 
spirit. — National brotherhood. — Political ideals . . . .22 

CHAPTER III. 

Isaiah ii., iii., iv. — Hebrew genius imaginative rather than logical.— 
Perfect and imperfect tenses in Hebrew. — The last days. — Contrast 
of the ideal and actual state of the nation. — Foreign influences. — 
Private idolatry. — Political materialism. — National decay. — Laws of 
God's government of the world. — Good and evil of commerce. — 
Hebrew matrons. — Female luxury. — Its punishment. — The Branch 
of Jehovah. — The restored though humbled nation . . . .42 

CHAPTER IV. 

Isaiah v. — Coming woes. — Fusing power of imagination. — Hebrew 
idyll. — Ancient fertility of Judsea. — Present barrenness. — The vine- 
yard of the Lord of Hosts. — Selfishness in an aristocracy. — Rights 
and duties of landowners. — Property a trust. — Hebrew and English 
laws of entail. — "Word and work of Jehovah. — God a constitutional 
ruler. — Abuse of words by worldly men. — Thucydides. — Fulfilment 
of Isaiah's threats — to his contemporaries — and to all ages since. — 
Grotius on prophecy . 59 

CHAPTER V. 

Isaiah vi. — The Prophet's commission. — The Temple. — Its scenes. — The 
Yision. — Insight into the life of things. — Prophecy rational and 
intelligible. — God the real and actual King. — His holiness. — His 
justice. — Patriotic hopes of Isaiah ....... 77 

CHAPTER VI. 

Isaiah vii. — The accession of Ahaz. — Political state of king and people. 
— ' Jehovah said.' — Topography of Jerusalem. — The Virgin con- 
ceiving. — The Incarnation an universal idea — how realized. — Loss 
of Hebrew independence. — Isaiah not a magician . . . ,95 



X 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 

Isaiah viii. — ix. 7. — The symbolical family. — Ancient and modern habits 
of public men. — Siloah and Euphrates. — The panic of Judah, and 
its remedy. — Galilee of the Gentiles. — The national gloom. — The 
great light. — The Messiah. — Gradual development of the Prophet's 
anticipations 113 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Isaiah ix. 8 — xii. — Epic unity. — Obstinate energy of the Hebrew race. 
— Lawlessness of the Ten Tribes. — Legalism of Judah. — The king 
of Assyria. — Gods in the image of men. — The scourge of nations, 
and its wielder. — Ancient roads. — The king of the stock of Jesse. — 
The golden age. — Fusion of conflicting elements in a nation. — 
Consequences of the revolt of Ephraim. — Deportation of Jews in 
Isaiah's time. — The universal Church — its relation to the world. — 
The water of salvation . 124 



CHAPTER IX. 

Isaiah xiii., xiv. — Genuineness of the prophecies on Babylon. — Sceptical 
criticism — its origin and progress — not positive or constructive. — 
Orthodox criticism. — Results of the controversy. — Traditional com- 
ments confounded with the text. — Hebrew historical notices of 
Babylon — Assyrian notices. — Babylon sacked in Isaiah's time by 
Persians, and perhaps by Medes. — Babylon a diagram or ideograph. 
— Arguments from style. — Suspense better than hasty decision. — 
Final overthrow of the empire of force 154 



CHAPTER X. 

Isaiah xiv. 28 — 32. — Philistia. — Origin of the Philistines — their extermi- 
nation commanded by Moses. — Law of conquests and extermina- 
tions. — British conquest of India. — Evil not eternal. — Philistia' s 
relations with Judah — with Assyria. — Sargon and Sennacherib in 
Philistia 184 



CHAPTER XI. 

Isaiah xv., xvi. — Moab. — Probably reduced by Shalmaneser. — History 
of Moab — picture of its overthrow. — Tribute of lambs due to Judah. 
— Friendship with Judah advised. — Modern distinction between the 
animal and spiritual life. — Corporate unity of a state . . .197 



CHAPTER XII. 

Isaiah xvii., xviii. — Damascus, Ephraim, and Ethiopia. — Probable date 
and unity of this prophecy. — The rush of nations. — The general 
panic. — Worldly alliances. — God's deliverance. — Notion that the 
destruction of Sennacherib's army is a myth — not well founded . 206 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Isaiah xix. — Egyptian dynasties in the time of Isaiah — contemporary or 
successive. — Historical notices from various sources. — Anarchy. — 
Invasion of Sargon. — Sack of Thebes. — Treaty between Egypt and 
Assyria. — Multitude of gods and of castes unfavourable to political 
unity. — Exclusive wisdom of priesthood. — The city of destruction. 
— Alexander and Ptolemy. — Temple of Onias. — Septuagint. — Philo. 
— Church of Alexandria. — Bacon on prophecy 212 



CONTENTS. 



xi 



CHAPTER XIV. 

PAGE 

Isaiah xx.— Sargon, Shalmaneser, Tartan. — The siege of Ashdod. — 
Shehna's policy. — Isaiah's symbolical protest against it. — He walks 
naked and barefoot. — Isaiah's policy probably more expedient — cer- 
tainly more befitting Israel's place in universal history . . . 218 



CHAPTER XV. 

Isaiah xxi. — A vision in a dream or trance. — Bible meaning of inspira- 
tion. — Divination. — Ancient oracles. — Special powers of nations and 
individuals. — One Greece, one Shakspeare. — Discernment of political 
effects in their causes less possible now than formerly. — 'The Desert 
of the Sea.'' — Tbe Prophet a watchman. — The tribes of Arabia. — 
Subjected by Assyria 225 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Isaiah xxii. — Political parties at Jerusalem. — Shebna and the majority. 
— Eliakim and the minority. — Isaiah's attack on Shebna. — Prepa- 
rations for tbe siege. — Topography of Jerusalem. — Site of Zion. — 
Spirit of the people and king. — Fall of Shebna. — Sufferings of 
modern nations from invasion. — Moral and religious results. — 
Prussia. — Switzerland 235 



CHAPTER XVII. 

Isaiah xxiii. — The Phoenicians — historical notices — their trade — carriers 
of philosophy and politics — relations with Israel. — The Tyrian 
Hercules — their religion political, not natural. — Siege of the Island- 
Tyre by Shalmaneser — by Nebuchadnezzar — by Alexander — present 
state. — Authorship of the prophecy. — The dispenser of crowns. — 
The Queen of cities dishonoured. — Tyre forgotten seventy years — 
shall sing as an harlot 253 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Isaiah xxiv. — xxvii. — Utter desolation of J udah — actually caused by the 
Assyrian armies. — National covenant broken by Ahaz — he shuts the 
Temple. — God's counsels of old. — Moab put for Assyria. — Patience 
in national calamities. — Tbe wife divorced, and taken back. — The 
silver trumpet sounded. — Expansion of Isaiah's views . . . 266 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Isaiah xxviii. — xxxv. — Political and religious prospects of Judah. — Ariel, 
the Lion of God. — Worldly state-craft. — True insight. — The em- 
bassy to Egypt. — Persecution of the prophets. — Dumb idols and the 
unseen teacher. — The holy solemnities. — Talmudical account of 
festive processions. — The stroke of doom on Sennacherib. — The real 
Deliverer. — Social influence of women. — The siege raised. — Edom 
put for Assyria. — Return of the ransomed captives .... 276 



CHAPTER XX. 

Isaiah xxxvi., xxxvii. — Historical events of Sennacherib's invasion and 
retreat — his letter — how answered — unconscious genius in the nar- 
rative. — Rab-shakeh's theology. — Isaiah's inspiration. — 'The incar- 
nate wrath of God.' — Zion's defiance. — The ' sign' of the sponta- 
neous crops. — The destroying angel. — Sethos delivered by Vulcan. 
— German war of freedom. — History teaches a belief in Providence. 
— Niebuhr.— Grote 302 



xii 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Isaiah, xxxviii. — The sickness of Hezekiah — importance of his life to his 
nation — his desire of recovery not purely selfish. — Fear of death in 
old times. — Christ's resurrection. — The sign of the shadow on the 
sun-dial. — Two accounts — the contemporary one not miraculous. — 
The Bible to be treated like other books. — Not so treated by sceptics. 
—The hymn of Hezekiah 320 



CHAPTER XXII. 

Isaiah xxxix. — The embassy from Babylon. — Chronicle of Eusebius, and 
Berosus. — Sennacherib's annals. — Books of Kings and Chronicles. — 
Value of the latter. — The sin of Hezekiah. — Trusting God in 
politics. — Modern history. — Niebuhr and Naples. — Colletta. — 
Nations and rulers re-act on each other. — Hezekiah' s reception of 
the embassy. — Isaiah's denunciation.- — 'Apres moi le Deluge.' — 
Prosperity of England. — Religious temper of our statesmen. — Mr. 
Gladstone 330 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

Isaiah xl. — lxvi. — Question of the genuineness of the last chapters of 
Isaiah. — Arguments on each side. — A third hypothesis. — The name 
of Cyrus. — Coresh, and Jehovah's servant. — Modern explanations. — 
Doubts and certainties. — The positive method. — Coherence of earlier 
and later prophecies. — The earlier not fulfilled as Isaiah had 
expected. — Enlargement of his views. — Finite and infinite ideals. — 
Facts for induction as to the nature of prophecy .... 345 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Isaiah xl. — lxvi. — The vision of the exile and return. — The transitory 
and the permanent. — The G-od of nature, and of man. — The power- 
less gods of the nations. — The Jewish institution of the Redeemer. 
— Its effect on the more enlightened Jews. — The Deliverer, King, 
and Teacher. — The work of Isaiah and Hezekiah. — Its success and 
its failure. — Jewish idea of the Messiah. — Its relation to their 
political life. — Atonement a human fact. — A rational idea. — Union 
of half-truths. — The Messiah of the Gospel. — The Prophets and the 
Apostles. — Isaiah's science of politics. — His death. — His triumph . 370 



Appendix — the English Text op the Book: op Isaiah . . .391 
Index . . . 477 



JEWISH HISTORY AND POLITICS. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE GREEK: ORATOR. — THE HEBREW PROPHET. — THE MODERN" PREACHER. 

SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHETS. — THE BOOK. OF ISAIAH. — ITS ARRANGEMENT — 
ITS UNITY. — HYPOTHETICAL AND POSITIVE CRITICISM. 



THE Spartan king told Xerxes that he was no match for 
the Greeks, ' because they, though free, had a master 
— the law — over them, which they feared more than the 
Persians did his despotic will.' And the Athenian orator, 
looking back on the great struggle after a generation or 
two had passed, gave his countrymen a farther explana- 
tion of their fathers' success 1 against the barbarian 
myriads of the king of Asia :' he pointed out how ' they 
had done such noble and wonderful deeds, because they 
were already organized into a free commonwealth in which 
the good were honoured, and the bad restrained, by law ; 
because they knew and held that it should be left to brute 
beasts to control each other by mutual violence, suah as 
oriental kings and subjects lived by, but that it became 
men to define rights by law, to persuade to its mainte- 
nance or expansion by rational and instructive speech, and 
in their conduct to follow the guidance of both these, — the 
law their king, and speech their teacher.' 

The orator enunciated an eternal truth. Had it been 
less than eternal, it could not be still keeping its ground, 
and still sustaining the life of every nation which holds to it, 
or indeed, although we (not to judge of others) hold never 




2 



LA W AND FREE SPEECH. 



so imperfectly to it : for though we are ready enough to 
thank God that we English are not as other men, we might 
more reasonably reflect how often we are all on the verge of 
doing what lies in us to disturb the perfect play of those 
two forces, of entire obedience to the law and absolute 
right of discussion, according as either may check some 
private opinion or class interest ; and how seldom we 
remember that one step beyond that verge lies the region 
of mutual violence with the correlates of despotism and 
insurrection in which its vitality consists. But this 
truth, this universal law of human society, has not only 
outlasted the polities of Greece, but was not first dis- 
covered there, as the Athenians supposed ; nor was the 
exercise of this master right and power of words ' so 
originally and peculiarly the possession of Greeks alone 
among all living creatures, that ' (as their panegyrist goes 
on to say) • if any other people did acquire it from them, 
this only extended the name of Grecian to distinctions of 
mind as well as race, so that they were called by it who 
shared their education rather than those who had their 
blood.' Another people had been set, many centuries 
earlier, to work out some of the same, with some very 
different, problems of human society, and under not 
wholly dissimilar conditions, internal and external : and 
while the Hebrew as well as the Greek could have pointed 
to various other proofs that his was a commonwealth, or 
constitutionally organized body -politic, as distinguished 
from the inorganic despotisms of Assyria or Persia, the 
one fixed on the same marks as the other did, as the 
characteristic ones : the ' Nomos and Logos ' of the Greek 
were anticipated by their true counterparts the ' Law and 
the Prophets ' of the Hebrew."'" 

* Since this was published in 1853, it has received the support of a not 
dissimilar view of the position of the Hebrew Prophets by Mr. Mill. He 
says : — ' The Egyptian hierarchy, the paternal despotism of China, were very 
fit instruments for carrying those nations up to the point of civilization which 
they attained. But having reached that point they were brought to a 
permanent halt for want of mental liberty and individuality, — requisites of 
improvement which the institutions that had carried them thus far entirely 
incapacitated them from acquiring; and as the institutions did not break 
down and give place to others, further improvement stopped. In contrast 
with these nations, let us consider the example of an opposite character, 
afforded by another and a comparatively insignificant Oriental people — the 



THE GREEK ORATOR. 



3 



Isaiah, no less than Demosthenes, might have said that 
it was the office of the political speaker and adviser, ' to 
see events in their beginnings, to discern their purport 
and tendencies from the first, and to forewarn his country- 
men accordingly ; to confine within the narrowest bounds 
those political vices of habitual procrastination, supineness, 
ignorance, and love of strife, which are inevitable in all 
states ; and to dispose men's minds instead to enlightened 
concord and unanimity, and to the zealous discharge of 
their social duties :' and he too might have added, ' All 
these things have I done, and no creature can say that I 
have ever left any of them undone ; I do not shrink from 
your scrutiny, be it never so strict.' * But there were 

Jews. They, too, had an absolute monarchy and a hierarchy. These did for 
them what was done for other Oriental races by their institutions — subdued 
them to industry and order, and gave them a national life. But neither 
their kings nor their priests ever obtained, as in those other countries, the 
exclusive moulding of their character. Their religion gave existence to an 
inestimably precious unorganized institution — the Order (if it may be so 
termed) of Prophets. Under the protection, generally though not always 
effectual, of their sacred character, the Prophets were a power in the nation, 
often more than a match for kings and priests, and kept up, in that little 
corner of the earth, the antagonism of influences which is the only real security 
for continued progress. Religion consequently was not there — what it has 
been in so many other places — a consecration of all that was once established, 
and a barrier against further improvement. The remark of a distinguished 
Hebrew, that the Prophets were in Church and State the equivalent of the 
modern liberty of the press, gives a just but not an adequate conception of 
the part fulfilled in national and universal history by this great element of 
Jewish life ; by means of which, the canon of inspiration never being 
complete, the persons most eminent in genius and moral feeling could not 
only denounce as reprobate, with the direct authority of the Almighty, what- 
ever appeared to them deserving of such treatment, but ^ould give forth 
better and higher interpretations of the national religion, which thenceforth 
became part of the religion. Accordingly, whoever can divest himself of 
the habit of reading the Bible as if it was one book, which until lately was 
equally inveterate in Christians and in unbelievers, sees with admiration the 
vast interval between the morality and religion of the Pentateuch, or even of 
the historical books, and the morality and religion of the Prophecies, a 
distance as wide as between these last and the Gospels. Conditions more 
favourable to progress could not easily exist ; accordingly, the Jews, instead 
of being stationary, like other Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks, the most 
progressive people of antiquity, and, jointly with them, have been the starting- 
point and main propelling agency of modern cultivation.' — Representative 
Government, by John Stuart Mill, pp. 41, 42. 

* Demosthenes, de Corona, c. 73. This, and the preceding passages from 
Herodotus (vii. 104), Lysias (ii. 17 — 20), and Lsjcrates (iv. 53 — 56), are 
pointed out as characteristic of the political life of Greece, by Mr. Grote : 
History, vii. 498, ix. 116. I need hardly remind the realer that the great- 
ness of ancient Pome, too, stood not in her laws alone, but in her laws and 
her free speech together: the tribune had as large a share as the senator in 
building up the Republic. 

B 2 



4 INSTITUTIONS FOR NATIONAL CULTURE. 



differences as well as resemblances between the orator and 
the prophet, and we must look for further illustrations 
elsewhere. 

The history of England, as of other nations of Christen- 
dom, shows us in the political constitution of the state an 
incorporated and endowed body of men called the clergy, or 
spiritualty, with the business of caring for all those interests 
of the nation which did not fall under the heads of trade, 
agriculture, war, or domestic and feudal (that is, patriarchal) 
government ; who practised the more difficult branches of 
medicine, law, and statesmanship ; who bestowed a religious 
consecration on all states of national, family, and personal 
life — delivering the crown and sceptre to the sovereign in 
trust from the King of kings, joining the hands of man 
and wife in the name of God, and enrolling as a citizen 
the babe who had just before been received into the con- 
gregation ; who claimed the right, and acknowledged the 
duty, of educating each member of the nation to appre- 
hend his privileges and obligations, not only as a citizen 
but as a man, and of teaching him that his Greatest dier- 
nity and happiness, and his highest relations with his 
fellow-men and with God, belonged to him as a man, and 
would be his in proportion as this, his proper humanity, 
was renewed in him : and who rescued one day in each 
week from work and trade, devoting it to rest, recreation, 
and public worship, and thus provided the opportunity 
and means for keeping up that consecration of the nation, 
and for carrying on that education and civilization of the 
people. And in the history of the Hebrew nation, we can 
trace the rudimental, though often rude and imperfect, 
counterparts of this European spiritualty, of which, indeed, 
it was in many respects the origin and model. And though 
decay and growth have conspired to efface many of the 
original characteristics of the ' Church of England,' and to 
provide other means for the execution of many of its old 
functions, it is still not only the best, but a thoroughly 
effective illustration of the analogous ' estate of the 
realm ' of Israel, provided that we avoid that bondage in 
which analogies and illustrations are mistaken for argu- 
ments, and keep before us the fact that each nation has 



THE WORSHIP OF JEHOVAH. 



5 



ever had its own character, institutions, and history, and 
must be understood and judged of in itself ; and this the 
more as it is remote in time and place from those with 
which we compare it. 

To the Tribe of Levi, then, the Mosaic constitution gave 
special functions in the state, and distributed them over the 
land for their performance. They were to carry on the sacri- 
fices and other services of the Tabernacle or Temple ; to con- 
duct the local worship of Jehovah ; to assist in, and give a 
religious sanction to, all the main proceedings of the nation 
and its kings ; to instruct the people in the law, — for which 
end they had the tithes allotted to them, that they might re- 
side in every part of the country when their turn was past for 
attending at the temple ; to keep the genealogies and other 
records of the state ; and to administer what we should 
now call its sanitary code. I include the local worship of 
Jehovah among their functions ; for though the Jewish 
historians and interpreters of the law — writing when the 
restriction of that worship to Jerusalem seemed the only 
means of rooting out the old local idolatries, and when the 
diminution of the extent and population of the kingdom 
made such restriction practicable — often condemn the 
worship of Jehovah in 'the High Places,' through the 
land as a corruption of the faith, yet they have given us a 
multitude of facts* which show that it did long prevail 
with the sanction of judges, prophets, and kings. It was 
supported by patriarchal practice and tradition, by the 
Mosaic constitution, and by its own reasonableness if only 
it could be prevented from degenerating into idolatry ; and, 
notwithstanding its corruptions, it helped to form the 
national character, so religious in spirit and not merely in 
forms, and of which we see one of the final developments 
in the organization of the synagogues all over the country 
in later times. And out of this spiritualty, or order of 
clergy, grew the institution and order of Prophets, or 

* Gen. xii. 7, 8; xxviii. 18; xxxi. 54. Judges vi. 24 ff. ; xiii. 16 ff. ; xvii. 
7ff. 1 Sam. vii. 9, 17 ; x. 3, 8 ; xiii. 8, 9 ; xiV. 34, 35 ; xvi. 5. 1 Kings iii. 
2ff. ; xviii. 30. 2 Kings xii. 3; xiv. 4; xv. 4, 34, 35 ; xviii. 4; xxiii. 5, 9. 
1 Chron. xxi. 26. 2 Chron. xv. 17. Psa. lxxiv. 8. It has been suggested that 
Rabshakeh (Isa. xxxvi. 7), appealed to a discontented faction who opposed 
the suppression of the worship of Jehovah in the High Places. 



6 NATIONAL EDUCATION OF THE HEBREWS. 



preachers, educated in colleges or schools of the Prophets. 
Such colleges existed at Ramah, Bethel, Jericho, Gilgal, 
and Jerusalem ; there was a president or ' father,' in 
which office we find Samuel and Elisha ; and his disciples 
and associates, who bore the names of ' sons of the 
prophets,' lived with him in a common habitation, and 
shared a common table. We are told that they 'pro- 
phesied with the psaltery, tabret, pipe, and harp :' their 
writings show them to have been students, nay masters, 
of poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy, as well as of music; 
and they were historians, though only brief abstracts 
of their historical works survive : practical, no less than 
speculative and literary, politicians, they show themselves 
educated to the use of the mental and moral powers which 
were required for advising their kings, at home and in 
foreign affairs ; and — what belonged to a still higher 
training — for advising and directing the people how to 
resist those kings when the latter set the constitution 
deliberately at nought, and yet not fall into the same 
guilt themselves. There seems reason to suppose that 
kings and princes were, when they pleased, educated 
in these schools, as well as the prophets. It was emi- 
nently a national education : in the Psalms, Prophets, 
and other Scriptures of the Old (nay, of the New) Testa- 
ment, we see its results, extending through the whole life 
of the nation for 1500 years : in the Pentateuch we see 
how its foundations were laid by the great Hebrew legis- 
lator, in furtherance of his design, that all nations should 
have cause to say, ' Surely this great nation is a wise and 
understanding people ;' and in the historical notices, brief 
as they are, of these schools of the prophets, we have suffi- 
cient evidence of an instrument adequate to connect the 
design and the results. But though regular education was 
not less, neither was it more, important in the Hebrew 
than in other nations. The prophet Amos says, ' I was 
no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son ; but I was an 
herdman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit : and J ehovah 
took me as I followed the flock, and Jehovah said unto 
me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.' And no 
doubt this was not the only instance in a body of whom 



SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHETS. 



7 



one of the characteristic features was that they should not 
belong exclusively to any one tribe, or rank, or profession, 
and that each should ' speak as he was moved by the 
Holy Ghost.' Yet here as elsewhere the settled institu- 
tions of the country will have exercised their due influence 
in forming the character even of those individuals who did 
not come into immediate contact with them. And while 
we may pursue our illustration by comparing the schools 
of the prophets with the monasteries and colleges which 
have hitherto sent out most, if not all, the great prophets 
of Christendom, as well as the multitude of ordinary 
teachers, we shall find a real and instructive resemblance 
between these and the Hebrew prophets. The sermons 
and other discourses of a Latimer at Paul's Cross, of a 
Luther at the Diet of Worms, of a Knox before the Popish 
queen and nobles, or of a Savonarola in Florence ; the field- 
preachings of a Wesley or Whitfield ; and, within narrower 
limits, the orations of a Burke in defence of justice, laws, 
institutions ; — these, taken with the lives and acts, and, 
where need was, the deaths of the men, are the true 
counterparts of what Isaiah and the rest of the Hebrew 
prophets said, did, or suffered. 

The prophets warned, threatened, and denounced, as 
well as advised and encouraged, the king or the people, as 
the occasion required : and the student of their writings 
has no more difficulty in connecting their discourses with 
the events of their own times than is reasonably explained 
by the imperfection of the historical records which remain 
to us of those events. Whatever else the prophets were, 
they were the political advisers and guides of their nation, 
in the maintenance and development, through constant 
struggles, of constitutional government — government by 
law, and not by arbitrary will. Samuel was the last of the 
judges, as well as the first of the prophets, and it may not 
be possible to distinguish completely between the two 
functions in considering his acts. Still it would seem that 
it was in his capacity of prophet that he first tried to 
induce the people over whom he exercised so deservedly 
great an influence, to abandon their desire for a king, and 
to continue in the old paths of the commonwealth : when 



8 THE PROPHETS POLITICAL ADVISERS. 



they insisted, he chose and anointed a king ; and when 
that king treated the constitution and laws with a dis- 
regard which was not the less serious because the instances 
recorded may seem of no great importance to us, Samuel 
took steps — treasonable steps the pedant might call them 
— for saving the nation and its future life, by advising 
and sanctioning a change of dynasty. Let us ask our- 
selves whether the Jewish nation would have played any 
part as a ' main propelling agency of modern cultivation,' 
if its monarchy had been allowed to take the form which 
Saul would have given it, if he had made religion a creature 
of the kingly power, and war an instrument of rapine, and 
not of justice ; and we shall see that Samuel's view of the 
matter was the true one, and in accordance with the 
proper vocation of a prophet. In the latter years of 
Solomon, when his government began to replace with the 
vices of an oriental despotism the virtues of a constitu- 
tional rule, the prophet Ahijah pointed out Jeroboam, the 
governor of the northern tribes, as the man whom the 
people might fitly rally round when the favourable oppor- 
tunity occurred for throwing off a yoke which was becom- 
ing intolerable. And after Jeroboam had thus founded 
the separate kingdom of Israel his successors were more 
than once dispossessed by revolutions promoted by prophets. 
But experience showed that such habitual appeals to force 
— though in defence of law — did but increase the lawless- 
ness of both kings and people ; and, while the northern state 
was torn in pieces by the continuance of this policy of revo- 
lution, in the southern kingdom of Judah the reciprocal 
rights and duties of rulers and people became more defined 
and consolidated, and the necessity for violent revolutions 
became less, while the evils they would have inflicted on 
the nation became greater with, its growing civilization, 
and the prophets, like the wiser political advisers in the 
more advanced times of other nations, kept themselves 
more strictly within the limits of the laws. Isaiah is un- 
sparing in his denunciation of the vices, social or personal, 
of the king, the priests, the prophets, and the statesmen, 
as well as of the people; and he warns them that their 
guilt will bring upon them the punishment of foreign 



THEIR POLICY AT DIFFERENT PERIODS. 9 



conquest : but he does not, like the earlier prophets, take 
upon himself to disturb the existing order of the state by 
prompting or sanctioning revolutionary acts. And if we 
compare Isaiah's political counsels for patriotically resisting 
these very conquerors, whom he had yet declared to be 
God's scourge of the nation, with Jeremiah's advice to 
the Jews of his time, that they should submit quietly to 
the invader, we see another phase of the wisdom of the 
true prophet, who knows how to distinguish ends from 
means, and who can adapt new means to the ends when the 
old ones have failed to be applicable. For the patriotic 
spirit, which was still capable of being roused to worthy 
action in Isaiah's time, was sick unto death in that of 
Jeremiah ; and the question was no longer that of main- 
taining the grand old Hebrew polity against the Assyrian 
exterminators of law and order by universal despotism, but 
of protracting the miseries of political decay and extinction 
under the feeble tyranny of a Jehoiakim or Zedekiah and 
their nobles, when the harsh strong military rule of the 
Babylonian offered the only opportunity — and history has 
proved that it was an opportunity — for a national recovery 
even from that depth of wretchedness. J eremiah has been 
condemned as unpatriotic, even as a traitor, for dis- 
couraging the resistance of the besieged city, while he 
shared its sufferings ; but he is fully justified by the re- 
sults in the history of his own nation, and not less so by 
a comparison with the like results in the like circumstances 
of other nations, ancient and modern. It was of the 
essence of the prophet's calling that he should sacrifice 
the letter to the spirit, if need was • and he did this, some- 
times in one way, and sometimes in another : but if we 
look well, we may always see that he was never a mere 
denouncer and protester : the law was ever with him, as it 
has been with the wise political teacher of every nation, 
the counterpart of liberty, whether of speech or action ; 
and he knew that the counterpoise and reciprocal play of 
these two forces was constantly required for the well-being 
of the state, whatever means might be most fitting for that 
end. And thus, in that extremest case with which Jere- 
miah had to deal, when all faith in law and order had 



MEANING OF THE NAME PROPHET. 



died out of the hearts of the nation's own rulers, the 
prophet could teach the nation that it might still "believe 
in the reality and vitality of these ; but that for a season 
they must look for them from without, where then only 
could they be found. 

But while the study of the writings and acts of the 
Hebrew prophets leads us to see that the analogy is real, 
and not fanciful, between these and the orators and 
political advisers of other nations, it shows us differences 
as well as resemblances. Demosthenes, and Cicero, and 
Burke, claim to speak in the cause of law and order, of 
justice and goodness ; but the Hebrew prophet claims to 
speak in the name, and as the messenger, of the God of 
law and order, of justice and goodness. The Hebrew word 
which we translate prophet, in the original means a speaker, 
yet a speaker who has been instructed to speak by another, 
and that other, God. This is illustrated by Exodus iv. 16, 
' And he shall be thy spokesman the word which is 

elsewhere rendered prophet) unto the people ; and he shall 
be, even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and 
thou shalt be to him instead of God.' And again in 
Exodus vii. 1 , c I have made thee a God to Pharaoh ; 
and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.' So Philo 
says that the prophet was 1 one who spoke not his own 
words but those of another.' The verb, too, is always 
used in the passive voice, to imply the same idea.* And 
it must have been with this understanding of the name 
that the LXX. translated W'SJ, by 7rpo(j)rjTf]9 : for the 
7rpo(p}]Tip of the Greeks was not the predicter, but the 
forth-speaker ; he who spoke for a god and interpreted his 
will to man ; though, while thus interpreting, he might 
be one to whom the future, no less than the past and 
present, were revealed : — 

09 ijhrj ra t eovra, ra r Laaofxeva, Tcpo t eovra. 

Our Lord thus designates John the Baptist as a prophet, 
yea more than a prophet, because he was so especially a man 
sent from God, to declare the coming of his kingdom ; 

* Gesenius, Lexicon, words, and S^DS. under the former of which he 

' ' ' T T T T» 

points out the like usage of the Latin deponent verbs, loqui,fari, vaticinari, 
&c. See, too, Ewald, Die Propheten, I. 6, tj the like effect. 



NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 



so the Apostles and Evangelists use the term ;* and so it 
has always been understood in modern times of most 
earnestness and zeal, such as our Reformation or Civil 
War, when men interpreted the Bible by experience gained 
in the council-chamber, the battle-field, or the prison, 
rather than by collation of commentaries. Thus Milton 
hopes, in his ' Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Print- 
ing,' that England is on the eve of becoming a nation of 
prophets ; and Jeremy Taylor entitles his book on the 
like subject, a 'Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying,' 
without a hint that he is using the word in any unusual 
sense. 

In thus claiming to be, not only a teacher, but a teacher 
sent from God, the Hebrew prophet asserted for himself a 
position in harmony w r ith that which he asserted for his 
nation also. The great men, and especially the great 
teachers, of any nation, pre-eminently exhibit the charac- 
teristics of their nation, while they carry them to an 
excellence and a height not attainable by inferior persons. 
Now we may say that the characteristic of the Hebrew 
nation, which distinguishes it from other nations, and 
marks the place which it holds in the history of the world, 
is its witness that the God who made heaven and earth is 
the moral and political Ruler of men and nations, and that 
men and nations stand in abiding personal relations with 
God, and God with them. If poetry and philosophy and 
political equality, if laws and constitutions and powers of 
self-government, be, in one sense, the birthright of all 
men, it is not the less true that these blessings were first 
acquired, matured, and reduced into possession for us, by 
the special agencies of the Greeks and the Roman. And 
if, as St. Paul told the Athenians and the Romans, the 
knowledge of God, and of the relations of God and man, 
was the birthright of all men, it is not less the fact (as St. 
Paul also points out), that this knowledge was made clear 
and coherent and vital in the hearts and lives of men, and 
matured and consolidated into an abiding inheritance for 
them, by the agency of the Hebrew nation. It is not 

* Matt.iii. 1—12; xi. 9—14. Luke i. 17, 76, 77. Rom. xii. 6. 1 Cor. xi. 
4 ; xiv. 6, &c. 



GREEKS, ROMANS, AND HEBREWS. 



without an effort of reflection, that we nineteenth century 
Englishmen realize the fact, that the belief in one living 
God, at once the Creator and the Moral Governor of the 
world, is not the natural belief of mankind. Yet the 
study of history not only shows us this, but also that 
though the early religion of the Greeks and of the Romans, 
and the successive efforts of the wisest and best among 
them, in developing and purifying that religion, might have 
been expected to lead to some such culmination in a true 
and pure faith, it was not so in fact. The piety of 
Homer and iEschylus and Socrates, of Numa and Scipio 
and Cicero, did not help the world to the attainment of a 
true faith, as well as to the attainment of true knowledge 
in art, in philosophy, and in civil government. But while 
the religion of the Greeks and the Romans decayed, and 
passed through superstition into scepticism and atheism, 
in spite of individual efforts to arrest the process, to the 
Hebrews it was given to advance, through national and 
personal struggles and sufferings, extending over many 
centuries, and even, at last, through national decay and 
death, to an ever higher and purer knowledge of God, and 
faith in God. We must look at the facts of the Hebrew 
history with a steady and prolonged investigation, to see, 
what we then do see, by how painful a process it was 
alone possible for men to learn that they are governed by 
one living and righteous God, at once their King and their 
Father and Friend. Then we see in that history, how 
erroneous, partial, and otherwise defective ' and unworthy 
beliefs were subjected to successive purifications and elimi- 
nations, as the Hebrew race passed through its course. 
The worship of idols, of many gods, even of the one God 
in places of supposed special sanctity, finally ends in the 
worship of God who is a Spirit, in spirit and in truth ; 
human,* and then animal sacrifices, are superseded by 

* Though the history of Abraham had taught the Jews from the earliest 
times that God required men to sacrifice their own wills by obedience and 
faith, and not their children with actual knife, and wood, and lire ; and 
though the law of Moses taught the same truth by directing the redemption 
and spiritual dedication of the firstborn of every human family, while the 
firstborn of all cattle was to be actually sacrificed ; yet so deeply was the dis- 
position to human sacrifice rooted in men's minds, that at the period of the 
nation's highest civilization we find Ahaz aud Manasseh still sacrificing their 



THE HEBREW COSMOS. 



'3 



the sacrifices ' of a contrite or a thankful heart ; and the 
ritual of sacerdotal ceremonies gradually makes way for 
the liturgies, and readings and expositions of Scripture, 
through which the Synagogues passed into the assemblies 
of the Christian Church. Thus argues St. Paul (himself 
the last and, excepting his Divine Master, the greatest of 
the Hebrew prophets) when, in the Epistle to the Romans, 
he sets forth the calling and office of Israel, and shows 
how the mission was fulfilled, though from the days of 
Abraham to his own there had ever been a portion, and 
often the largest portion, of the nation so faithless and 
reprobate that he denies to them the name of Israel. 

And while there was thus a continual progress making 
in the nation, in order to its arrival at these ends, and the 
future was a constant advance in excellence, and not 
merely in position, upon the past, the future was, in a 
very singular manner, a chief interest of the nation — that 
is, of the better and nobler part of the nation — and es- 
pecially of its teachers. The Hebrew lived in the future, 
while he worked in the present and strengthened his 
energies for work and his future hopes by the traditions 
of the past. Grant as much or as little historical value to 
the narrative of Genesis and Exodus as the severest 
criticism may demand, or the temper of the critic dispose 
him to give, these narratives are still the mirror in which 
we see the lineaments of the Hebrew mind clearly shown 
to us. The Hebrew idea of creation is that of a cosmos 
of physical order and beauty, of which the inanimate and 
animate existences were evolved by the Creator according 
to the several laws which he had given to each ; yet 
all subordinated from the beginning to the descendants of 
the human pair who were to multiply till they had filled 
and subdued the earth, while they themselves were to live 
in personal relations with the Creator himself. And at 
every discovery of the fact that there are powers of evil 
arrayed to break down this order, and to resist man's 
attempts to enter into and possess his inheritance, there is 

children to Moloch. They were every way had kings ; hut their depravity 
must have represented the depraved portion of the then existing nation, as 
much as its pious and virtuous portion was represented in Hezekiah and 
Isaiah. 



H THE KINGDOM OF JEHOVAH. 

a new promise for the future, a new assurance, not only that 
the victory shall be with the right, but that it shall be won by 
the aid of Jehovah present with his servants. The seed of 
the woman shall triumph over the seed of the serpent ; 
the flood shall be followed by the rainbow ; the descendants 
of the childless Abraham shall become a great nation in 
the land in which he is a wanderer ; the Egyptian bondage 
shall be succeeded by the triumphs of the Red Sea, and the 
entrance to the Promised Land ; and all by the same ever- 
present aid. What the Iliad and Odyssey were to the 
Greeks, what the traditions preserved to us by Livy were 
to the Romans, and what they are to us as the records of 
the original mind and character of these nations, such 
were, and are, the early books of the Old Testament to the 
Hebrews and to us. We see that the light in which the 
Hebrew read his history was the light of God's promises, 
fulfilled in the past, and confidently anticipated in the 
future ; promises of the establishment, and maintenance, 
and endless evolution of the kingdom of Jehovah upon 
earth, with Jehovah present in his kingdom. Age after 
age these anticipations become more and more lofty, and 
more universal. As increasing civilization and civil pro- 
gress extend the earthly horizon of the nation, so is their 
spiritual horizon extended by a new, and clearer, and 
fuller apprehension of what God's plans and promises are, 
and what his methods of carrying them into effect. It 
becomes continually clearer to the Hebrew mind, that not 
only the material, but also the human and spiritual, world 
has been constituted and is governed by the laws and 
counsels and actual superintendence of God, and that God 
employs men as his agents both for carrying on this 
government, and for revealing and explaining its cha- 
racter and methods. And the culmination and cod sum- 
mation of this national training were in the preparation of 
the nation to expect, and for the faithful of the nation to 
acknowledge and receive in due time, the actual coming of 
a Messiah, and thus realize the end which the writer 
to the Hebrews sets forth in the opening words of his 
Epistle : — ' God, who at sundry times and in divers 
manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the pro- 



HOW UNDERSTOOD BY ISAIAH. 



15 



phets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by a Son, 
whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also 
he made the worlds,' &c. Thus the nation became a 
nation of prophets, and its teachers prophets above all 
men, though bearing the common lineaments of all. # 

But we shall best learn what the prophets were to the 
Jews, and what they are to us, by a methodical examina- 
tion of what the greatest of them said and did, during a 
chief crisis of his country's history. The meaning and 
worth of institutions came to light in the collision of the 
Assyrian empire with the Hebrew commonwealth, as they 
did when Xerxes invaded Greece, or Napoleon overran 
Europe : and if we will take the Book of Isaiah, and follow 
its guidance, we may expect to see its facts — its repre- 
sentation of the Hebrew nation and their politics in the 
times of Tiglath Pileser, Sargon and Sennacherib, — in their 
own proper light. This, therefore, I propose to do. 

As our familiarity with this Book of Isaiah increases, we 
find that the careful literary composition and elaborate 
finish of the single prophecies, noticeable as it is, is hardly 
more so than that with which these are again fused into 
larger, but not less organic members, and these again into 
one whole. And the most simple and probable explana- 
tion of this arrangement, if there be no insurmountable 
obstacle to its acceptance, is to attribute it to Isaiah him- 
self. If it can be shown that this explanation, of the 
prophet's own arrangement of the book in its present 
form, is incompatible with the nature of its contents, we 
must give it up, and refer the compilation to such later 
date as the exigencies of the case require ; but we must 
not overlook that the latter is on the face of it the hypo- 
thetical and speculative, and the former the historical and 
positive criticism. For the arrangement of the book, with 
its general and particular titles and its historical notices, 
together with all that these assert (or imply) as to the 
authorship, have come down to us from time immemorial 
by the same means as the text itself, of which they must 
therefore be taken to be an integral and original part, 

* For an exhaustive account of Hebrew Prophecy, see the Dean of West- 
minster's Lectures on the Jewish Church, xix. and xx., pp. 415 — 476. 



i6 



THE BOOK OF ISAIAH: 



until the contrary is proved ; and the one no less than the 
other must be protected by that canon of criticism, that no 
conjecture, however ingenious, must disturb the integrity 
of the text, however obscure, until the actual reading has 
been shown to be hopelessly corrupt. We cannot alto- 
gether dispense with supposition and conjecture as helps 
to the elucidation of such parts of this book as, by reason 
of their antiquity, must now remain without any more 
certain explanation ; nor need we doubt that conjectural 
criticism often throws a real, though a nickering, light on 
objects which are but dimly discernible in the distance of 
ages, if only the torch be kindled by a mind thoroughly 
imbued with the spirit of the writer commented on, and 
held in steady, that is judicious, hands. The studious 
and meditative genius of the German eminently qualifies 
him for these speculative inquiries and explanations ; but 
while the Englishman avails himself of them, with the 
frank acknowledgment that he could never have originated 
them himself, he must not scruple to test and modify 
them by the practical common sense which is his birth- 
right, and which, if a more modest, is not a less useful 
gift than the other. To exhaust the evidence and the 
arguments on every side of a question is the German's 
proper calling ; and I believe that the help of the German 
commentators is indispensable to our thorough understand- 
ing of the Prophecies of Isaiah : yet that they will be 
most serviceable to him who can best check speculation 
with not literal but matter-of-fact criticism ; who can 
abstain from doubting historical facts because contempo- 
rary records relate them in ways not easy of verbal recon- 
ciliation, or in phrases not the most obvious or likely if 
tried by the standard of his own mind ; and who is 
content to account for all such minor difficulties and 
discrepancies in the same way as he must the like ones 
which he finds in the books of his own day, and which 
the still living authors cannot, or do not, explain. Com- 
mentators often darken the text with the mists of their 
own undue speculativeness ; and by returning to a more 
practical method of investigation, by studying the book as 
it is, and not as ingenious theorists say it must have been, 



ITS ARRANGEMENT. 



we shall often secure a firm pathway through difficulties 
that conjecture has hopelessly perplexed. 

The arrangement of the Book of Isaiah's Prophecies, as 
it has come down to us, is mainly chronological, yet some- 
times with reference to the subjects rather than to the 
dates of the several pieces which form it. A like method 
is observable in St. Matthew's Gospel, in which the mira- 
cles, parables, and discourses are collected into groups 
without strict regard to the order of time ; the Pentateuch, 
the Book of Psalms, and the Bible itself as a whole, are 
examples of the like composite arrangement, and we have 
a modern instance of the kind, with an exposition of 
its importance, in Mr. Wordsworth's avowedly deliberate 
arrangement of his poems into a whole. 

The particular arguments will be found in their several 
places ; the general conclusion T deduce from them is, that 
chapter vi. is the account of Isaiah's consecration to the 
prophetic office, and its date the earliest in the book ; that 
the three preceding discourses (chapters i., ii. — iv., v.) are 
placed first, in order to set forth the state of the nation at 
the time Isaiah began to prophesy, and the consequent fit- 
ness of the severe terms of the commission given him ; 
and that the rest of the book preserves the chronological 
order, with possibly such modifications as might serve to 
bring together similar prophecies, such as the series of 
' burdens ' on the neighbouring nations ; and probably 
also in certain cases (chapters vii. — xii., xvii. xviii., xxviii. 
— xxxv., xl. — lxvi.) with some revision and fusion of dis- 
courses originally distinct, so that they are now successive 
paragraphs in a continuous writing. The supposed insur- 
mountable obstacles to the acceptance of the conclusion 
that the book owes its present form to Isaiah's own hand, 
are the account of the ' Sign ' of the shadow going back 
on the dial, and the doubt — which, indeed, the most 
eminent German critics say is not a doubt, but a final 
decision in the negative, — whether certain portions of the 
book were written by Isaiah at all. These will be best 
considered as they occur : I will here only notice, in con- 
nection with the latter question, the fallacy contained in 
an argument sometimes employed as to the arrangement 

c 



1 8 CRITICISM, HYPOTHETICAL AND POSITIVE. 



of the book, and which, supposes it to be a collection like 
those which are popularly called the ' Psalms of David,' 
and the 'Proverbs of Solomon,' though it is admitted 
that only a portion of each can be ascribed to its nominal 
author. The fallacy lies in assuming that there is no 
difference between a real title, and a popular name, of a 
book. In the Hebrew the respective titles are, ' Isaiah,' 
' Psalms,' ' Proverbs,' with no names attached to the two 
last ; and both of these contain special titles expressly 
attributing various portions to other authors, while the 
whole book of Isaiah is almost as expressly attributed 
to him. And if we find indications that the whole, looked 
at as a whole, is more like the growth of an individual 
mind than a collection of writings of men who lived in 
times far apart from each other ; if we can, as we proceed, 
trace the manner and method in which the prophet's views 
opened out, as he came in contact with, and sought for the 
deepest springs of, the circumstances and events of his own 
times ; then the proportion and relation of particular parts 
to each other and to the whole will become an important 
element of the question, and those of which the genuine- 
ness is disputed will be seen in a light, and with advantages, 
not available to us if we merely analyze each separately. 
The fact of such a vital coherence and interdependence 
will, I believe, become more and more apparent as we go 
on ; we shall find a harmony resulting not from mere me- 
chanical compilation, but from the presence of a one in- 
forming and enlivening spirit, and our reason no less than 
our religious feeling will resist the dismemberment of any 
part of the organized whole. And if so, we shall (as can 
hardly be too often repeated) escape from the negative and 
the hypothetical to the positive and the historical. 

For the negative easily passes into the hypothetical 
criticism. The commentators who are too little sensitive 
to the weight of evidence in favour of the facts we have, 
are ingenious in making out historical dates and details of 
what they say must have been the events of Isaiah's time, 
and alluded to by him in his prophecies. Such criticism 
is valuable in as far as it is a real induction ; and an 
unhoped for, and interesting, verification of it has of late 



LIMITS OF REAL INDUCTION. 



19 



years presented itself in the Cuneiform Inscriptions, which 
are already found to mention several facts which the 
Hebrew historians had passed in silence, but which are 
precisely those which the student of the prophets knew 
to be wanted, and which he had to assume in any attempt 
to form a distinct picture of the times. But the limit of 
real induction is soon reached ; and the commentator who 
expatiates beyond it becomes unable to distinguish between 
facts and fancy. Each sees the error in his neighbour ; 
but we shall perhaps best guard against it in ourselves if 
we consider that we possess no such power of discovering 
more than a mere outline of the facts on which any such 
book, even written by a still living author, is founded : 
no two men, even though fellow-countrymen and con- 
temporaries, look at the same facts in exactly the same 
light, nor does either draw exactly the same inferences as 
the other would ; and especially is this the case in writings 
in which the imagination of the poet or orator has a large 
part, because it is one of the prerogatives of the imagina- 
tion not to be tied down to literal facts, but to modify, 
while it employs, these instruments of illustrating universal 
ideas or laws. It might have seemed the easiest thing 
possible to supply the facts assumed in most of Words- 
worth's poems, by a simple enough use of the ' higher 
criticism but the actual statement of those facts in his 
Memoirs shows that they were quite different from what 
any criticism could have suspected."* We must admit of 
the Hebrew, what Niebuhr asserts of the Greek and Latin, 
literature,— that though we may be able to see that some 
facts were present to the writer's mind, it is often no more 

* He presents, as though he had himself witnessed, various occurrences 
related to him by his sister ; he also says of the Evening Walk, — ' The plan 
of it has not been confined to a particular walk, or an individual place ; a 
proof (of which I was unconscious at the time) of my unwillingness to submit 
the poetic spirit to the chains of fact and real circumstance. The country is 
idealised rather than described in any one of its local aspects.' — Memoirs, 
vol. i. p. 68. Southey supplies us with another illustration : — ' In one point 
I thought him (Sir George Beaumont) too much of an artist ; none of his 
pictures represented the scene from which he took them ; he took the features, 

and disposed them in the way which pleased him best You shall 

see a little piece of his which perfectly illustrates this. The subject 

is this very house, and scarcely any one object in the picture resembles the 
reality. His wish was to give the character, the spirit of the scene.' — Life 
and Correspondence, vol. vi. p. 216. 

c 2 



20 



ALLUSIONS TO LOST FACTS. 



possible to re-piece them into an historical statement than 
it is to restore the statues or columns to which we know 
must have once belonged those marble fragments which we 
see everywhere built into the walls in modern Rome. We 
must be content with him to define the true interpretation 
of an ancient book as ' an expression of its meaning as it 
was understood, if not by its contemporaries, yet by those 
who lived shortly after, when the passing allusions of the 
moment were lost.' * Nor is it merely lapse of time which 
prevents our now recovering all the detail of the facts 
present to the eyes or mind of Isaiah, or of the other 
prophets. Jeremiah's statement (chap, xxxvi. 2, 4), that 
in the fourth year of Jehoiakim he wrote in a book all the 
words that he had spoken during a period of about twenty 
years : the fact that the short book of Micah is a summary 
of his discourses delivered during three reigns, as we learn 
from its title : the existence of like titles and inscriptions 
throughout the Prophetical Books : the explanatory narra- 
tives in some of them, and the manner in which these are 
introduced : the exact rhythmical structure, and elaborate 
finish of the composition, both of thoughts and language : 
all show that the writings of the prophets, as we now have 
them, are not verbal reports of their discourses set down 
before, or at the moment of, delivery, but careful literary 
compositions, in which these national preachers, at their 
leisure, and with the deliberate judgment and ability 
which the books themselves exhibit, put on record what 
was of permanent interest to their countrymen, and to all 
coming ages and peoples. And in doing this they would 
certainly (like men in the same circumstances now) 
obliterate, or suffer to become indistinct, references to 
events which were of absorbing interest at the moment of 
speaking, but which had given place to others at the time 
of writing, perhaps many years afterwards, though the 
eternal and universal truths which those particular events 
had best illustrated then, continued as important, and as 
worthy of proclamation as ever.t Nor need we lament 

* Letter to a Student of Philology, translated in the Educational Magazine for 
January, 1840, and since then in his Life and Letters. 

t (See Ewald, Die Propheten, i. 42 : or my translation of the first two 



HOW FAR IMPORTANT. 



2 I 



that we cannot restore these marks which the prophets 
have not themselves thought it necessary to retain. They 
are not only not necessary for a right understanding of our 
authors, but would have been a real hindrance : for they 
would have overlaid those universal truths, those enuncia- 
tions of the laws of God's government of the world, which 
they teach us to see in all history, and not only in their 
own, and in which the highest interest of the Hebrew 
prophets for us consists. But if some commentators are 
thus mistaken in their anxiety to invent what they cannot 
find, others go into the other extreme of indifference to 
those links between the prophet and his own times which 
do actually remain, and are so important in enabling us to 
feel that he was a real flesh and blood man : the middle, 
matter-of-fact course of taking just what we really have 
given us, is the best, alike for historical and for philo- 
sophical and theological purposes. 

sections of the Introduction (to which I thus refer) of this work of Ewald, 
in Kitto's Journal of Sacred Literature, for January, 1853, p. 47. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE BOOK OF ISAIAH. — ITS TITLE. DATE OF CHAPTER I. — PROPHETIC IMAGI- 
NATION. — HEBREW ORATORY RHYTHMICAL. — PARALLELS IN OTHER NATIONS. 

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I. — TIMES OF UZZIAH AND JOTHAM. — FORMS AND 

SPIRIT. — NATIONAL BROTHERHOOD. — POLITICAL IDEALS. 

THE book begins with its title : — ' The vision of Isaiah, 
which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the 
days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of 
Judah.' 

This is at once the title of the whole book, and the 
title of the chapter of which it forms the first verse ; so as 
to indicate that the chapter is an introduction to the 
book, and a summary of its contents. If we compare it 
with the similar titles to the books of Amos and Micah, 
we may see from that comparison that there is no need for 
the conjecture of Vitringa, adopted by so many of his 
successors, that it, at first, ended with the word ' Jerusa- 
lem,' and belonged only to the single prophecy contained 
in the first chapter, and that some compiler of the book 
added the rest of the sentence to make a title for the whole. 
That the expression, ' concerning Judah and Jerusalem,' 
should be thus prefixed to prophecies which relate to 
Ephraim, Egypt, Assyria, and other neighbouring nations, 
will not appear a difficulty (if it ever did so), when we 
bear in mind that the language of the Hebrew, and above 
all of the Hebrew prophet, regards the life and force rather 
than the formal accuracy of its expressions. The highest 
kind of accuracy indeed, that which distinguishes and asserts 
the real differences and relations of things, it has ; but it 
is careless of, or rather unacquainted with, that classical 



ISAIAH I. i. DA TE OF FIRST PROPHECY. 23 



precision of word and inference which all European dis- 
course is more or less imbued with. For the destiny of all 
these nations did in truth ' concern ' Judah and Jeru- 
salem, and only for this reason became the object of 
Isaiah's consideration. 'Whatever he utters against the 
heathen nations, he says it all for the sake of Judah.' * 

But while this first prophecy, or discourse, forms a 
suitable summary and introduction to the whole book, and 
its actual place is thus sufficiently accounted for, there 
seems no reason for doubting that it was delivered on 
some special occasion. Its date therefore comes in ques- 
tion, and this must be decided according as we take 
verses 7, 8, to describe the actual state of the country 
when the words were uttered, or as prophetic of what it 
would shortly become. If the latter, we could not hesitate 
to refer it to the earliest period of Isaiah's ministry — the 
reign of Jotham, — which every other part of the discourse 
suits perfectly. If the former, it must have been delivered 
in the reign of Ahaz, before he shut up the temple ; or 
during the Assyrian invasion in the time of Hezekiah : 
and the earlier date would be preferable, as less opposed 
to the position in which we find the prophecy, though it 
is not, as some commentators suppose, fixed by the men- 
tion of idolatry in verses 29, 30, 31, for we see from 
chapters xxx. 22, xxxi. 7, that this still co-existed with 
the worship of Jehovah, in the reign of Hezekiah, as it 
had in those of his predecessors. The doubt cannot be 
decided by the mere grammatical construction of the 
sentence as it could be in English, since the Hebrew 
prophets habitually use the liberty which their language 
permits, or even requires, of speaking of future events in 
the perfect tense. Thus the description of the invading 
army in chap. v. 26, is in the perfect tense in the Hebrew. 
But the question is, whether, in this particular place, the 
expressions are those of the poet and prophet picturing 
the scene as it rises in vision before his imagination, or 
whether there be something so matter-of-fact in them that 
they must be taken to describe the horrors of actual 
invasion, visible at the very time to the bodily eyes of 

* Kimchi in Gesenius. 



2 + 



PROPHETICAL IMAGINATION. 



Isaiah and his hearers. There are learned authorities on 
each side, and they have been marshalled in a special 
treatise by Caspari, who decides in favour of the earlier 
date. If I could perceive the supposed difference between 
this and the ordinary prophetic style, I should (unless 
that difference made it impossible) still be decided by the 
external fact — the actual position of the discourse — to 
adopt the same conclusion. But while I recognise the 
thoroughly life-like character of the picture, I am not sure 
that it is more life-like than many which no one denies 
Isaiah to have drawn in imagination ; nor (if I must argue 
the a priori point too) that the imaginative creations of 
such a master of his art as Isaiah can be thus positively 
distinguished from statements of fact. We must be 
guided by the context, the usual style of the writer, and 
the history of the times. The student of Isaiah's works 
knows that he does (like the other prophets) constantly 
fuse the present and the future into one life-like picture in 
which it is not always possible to separate imagination (or 
vision, as the Hebrews called it) from fact. If, then, we 
conceive such a fusion in the present case, and understand 
that the inroads and devastations of foreign armies were 
beginning when Isaiah delivered this discourse, but that 
he heightened his description of what had already occurred 
with a picture of what was certainly to follow, we shall 
find no date more suitable for the discourse than that 
of the latter days of the reign of Jotham, when ' Jehovah 
began to send against Judah Rezin, the king of Syria, and 
Pekah, the son of Remaliah.'"* The prosperity of the last 
sixty years was still existing, though beginning to break 
up under blows of which the prophet saw from the first 
that there were to be thenceforth a long succession. 

And, perhaps, the finished and elegant structure of this 
prophecy may be taken with some propriety as itself an 
indication of the early date of its composition. It is the 
attribute of youth, and especially of youthful genius, to 
embody its newly-budding thoughts and feelings in ideals 
of microcosmic beauty and completeness : but by-and-bye 
the growing and expanding mind finds these ideals of its 

* 2 Kings, xv. 37. 



HEBREW VERSE AND RHYTHM. 



25 



own creation too narrow to express the whole truth of 
things, and abandons them for the larger, though severally 
less complete, forms which the various realities of the 
actual world supply, and then seeks to find in these a new 
and better ideal, large as the world itself ; — an ideal 
which is revealed to, rather than created bf, the human 
mind ; and the source of which, if we will go so far back, 
we must look for in that which the Athenian philosophers 
called the eternal truth and beauty of the divine mind, 
and Hebrew sages the things of the kingdom of God. 
That the marks of such a first youthful ideal are here 
conclusively present I do not venture to assert positively, 
but rather leave the point to the feeling and judgment of 
the reader ; but certainly this short chapter may be taken 
as a very complete summary and specimen of the chief 
characteristics — moral, political, religious, poetical — of the 
whole book ; and we may find in it the germs of almost 
all the great principles which Isaiah announced and applied 
to practice during the whole period that he exercised the 
prophetic office. 

To Bishop Lowth we owe the first complete and con- 
clusive analysis and explanation of the structure of Hebrew 
poetry, and the proof that the prophets wrote in the same 
measure or rhythm as the poets properly so called ; and 
we could hardly have a better illustration of the latter 
fact than in the chapter before us. The rhythm of 
thoughts and images which in Hebrew poetry* takes the 
place of the rhythm of syllables and sounds, and enables it 
to be adequately translated into other languages, may here 
be studied in its several forms : — line answering to line, and 
word to word ; each bringing out the depth and force of 
the other, sometimes by variation, sometimes by opposition, 
sometimes by accumulation, of the corresponding or con- 
trasted thoughts ; no thought so like the other as to 
occasion sameness, nor so unlike as to make a discord ; no 
formal adherence to any one rule of parallelism, but a free 
movement in which the poet's inward sense of beauty and 

* The primitive poetry of Transylvania and of some other nations is said 
to be characterized by a rhythm of thoughts instead of sounds ; but the 
Hebrew alone has carried this rhythm into the period of mature civilization 
and literary culture. 



26 STRUCTURE OF HEBREW RHYTHM. 



order supersedes all formal rules ; and a blending and 
fusing of the several parts into a harmony which, with its 
variety in unity, produces a fulness not attainable in any 
other way. Let us take the first paragraph : — 

Hear 0 heavens, and give ear 0 earth ; 

For Jehovah hath spoken. 

1 have nourished and brought up children, 

And they have rebelled against me. 

The ox knoweth his owner, 

And the ass his master's crib : 

But Israel doth not know, 

My people doth not consider. 

Here, in the first line, ' heavens ' is set against ' earth,' 
and both united in rhythmical opposition to ' Jehovah,' 
the inanimate creation to the living God ; while ' hear' 
and ' give ear ' in like manner correspond with each other 
and with ' spoken.' Then the next six lines have a 
double correspondence and double contrast of the four last 
lines among themselves, while the two preceding ones 
(which also balance each other) indirectly involve and 
anticipate the images of the four that follow : — ' 1 ' and 
'me' corresponding and contrasting with 'owner' and 
'master,' 'nourished' with crib,' and 'brought up' again 
with 'owner/ and 'children ' with 'ox' and 'ass;' and 
the rebellion of the former with the obedience of the 
latter : and the thoughts are again repeated with a variation 
and summed up in the two last lines. And, finally, those 
two lines, with that taste and judgment with which every 
true poet (and none more than Isaiah) keejDS down his 
imagination, and subordinates the parts of his diction to 
the whole, turn back the mind from images to realities, 
bringing before it the very people of Israel and their sin. 

Verses 18, 19, 20, supply us with another instance of 
very beautiful rhythmical construction : — 

Come, now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah : 
Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow ; 
Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. 
If ye be willing and obedient : 

Ye shall feed on the good of the land. 
But if ye refuse and rebel : 
The sword shall feed on you, 
For the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it. 



First the single introductory line ; then two, corresponding 



RHYTHMICAL ORATORY OF THE HEBREWS. 27 



as to the lines (yet with the artistic variation in the 
relative positions of 'white' and the answering 'red'), 
but with the parts of each line contrasting between them- 
selves ; then four lines, in which the balance is between 
the alternate lines, with a contrast of word for word in the 
first and third, and a play and contrast of words and 
images (which call up, as in a back ground, the whole 
picture both of rural plenty and foreign invasion) in the 
second and fourth lines ; and then the single line brings 
the period to a full close, while it answers to its first line. 
These lines must have been elaborately constructed ; and 
they evince a delicately cultivated and refined sense of 
beauty in the least as well as the greatest matters of the 
poet's art. And in this, as in every part of the rhythmic 
art displayed by Isaiah, there is a soul of poetry inhabiting 
and expressing itself through this beautiful form. 

Yet we must repeat, that the prophet — that Isaiah — is 
not a poet, but a preacher or orator ; his aim is not to de- 
light, but to teach and persuade men : he is not content 
that his hearers should unconsciously receive into their 
hearts the seeds of truth and goodness in the form of 
beauty, there to take root and grow up, night and day, 
one knows not how : but he labours to impart these by 
direct indoctrination in all its moral methods of reproof, 
warning, consolation, and instruction. There may be no 
exaggeration in the assertion that Isaiah possessed poetic 
genius of the highest order, and had cultivated it with the 
utmost care ; but it is his servant not his master, and he, 
the patriot and the man of God, habitually employs it for 
the purposes of his own proper vocation. The elaborate 
Masoretic punctuation, which has undertaken to mark the 
tone not only of words but of propositions, and so to pre- 
serve the sense of the thought, the internal life of the 
sentence,* in a dead language, recognises this distinction 
between the properly poetical books — Job, Psalms, and 
Proverbs — and those of the prophets. And while there 
are traces in the Hebrew text of the former, there are none 
in that of the latter, that they were once written verse- 
wise. On ground of form, then, no less than of substance, 

* Ewald's Hebrew Grammar, translated Dr. Nicholson, § 180. 



28 



RHYTHMICAL DISCOURSE 



I have thought it more correct — in the Version which the 
reader will find at the end of the volume — to represent the 
original by a translation printed as prose. At the same time 
I have — with a few exceptions, more or less required by the 
sense — marked the principal Masoretic pauses by the colon, 
full stop, and paragraph, much as is done in the Authorized 
Version.* And if we consider that the Hebrew language 
retained to the last its primitive simplicity of construction, 
and never acquired those complex developments of gram- 
mar which have fitted the classical and modern tongues 
for elaborate prose composition ; and that for this reason, 
as well as because Hebrew verse was a rhythm of sense 
rather than of sound, the main distinction between it and 
prose must always have been in the tone of thought ; — 
we shall find an important illustration in the rhythmical 
oratory of the Greeks at a period when their political 
culture, indeed, was at a much less advanced stage than 
that of the J ews in the time of Isaiah, but that of the two 
languages, as instruments of thought, apparently not so 
unequal. ' We must recollect,' says Mr. Grote, of this 
early rhythmical discourse, ' that this was not only the 
whole poetry, but the whole literature of the age : . . . . 
and writing, if beginning to be employed as an aid to a few 
superior men, was at any rate generally unused, and found 
no reading public. The voice was the only communicant, 
and the ear the only recipient, of all those ideas and 
feelings which productive minds in the community found 
themselves impelled to pour out ; both voice and ear being 
accustomed to a musical recitation or chant, apparently 
something between song and speech, with simple rhythm, 
and a still simpler occasional accompaniment from the 
primitive four-stringed harp.' And again, — ' Kallinus 
.... employed the elegiac metre for exhortations of war- 
like patriotism ; and the more ample remains which we 
possess of Tyrtseus are sermons in the same strain, preach- 
ing to the Spartans bravery against the foe, and unanimity 

* The Koran, and other rhythmical but not metrical books of the Arabs are 
always written as prose. The reader will find an interesting account of this 
prose, and of the resemblances and differences between it and the corre- 
sponding Hebrew literature, in Mr. Chennery's translation of the Assemblies of 
Hariri, vol. i. pp. 41 ff. 



OF OTHER NATIONS. 



29 



as well as obedience to the law at home. They are 
patriotic effusions, called forth by the circumstances of the 
time, and sung by single voice, with accompaniment of the 
flute, to those in whose bosoms the flame of courage was 
to be kindled. For though what we peruse is verse, we 
are still in the tide of real and present life, and we must 
suppose ourselves rather listening to an orator addressing 
the citizens, when danger or dissension is actually impend- 
ing.'* The modern Italian improvisatore, too, can utter 
verse extempore ; and such was the rhythm of Grattan's 
first speech in the English House of Commons, that we are 
told (in Lord Holland's Memoirs) that ' Mr. Pitt beat 
time to the artificial but harmonious cadence of his periods.' 
And Mr. Lecky says of Shiel's speeches that ' they seem 
exactly to fulfil Burke's description of perfect oratory, half 
poetry and half prose. 'f Even in the actual utterance of 
their discourses the Hebrew prophets must have come very 
near the rhythmical form of their written works : and with 
whatever mixture of simple or even rude prose we suppose 
them to have spoken, we see that they afterwards recorded 
the substance of their discourses in literary compositions, 
which for their careful editing may be better compared with 
Burke's pamphlets than with his merely reported speeches ; 
while their eminently poetical thoughts and imagery, as well 
as diction, may remind us of the free blank verse in which 
Shakspeare idealises spoken discourse, as contrasted with 
the more restricted movement of Milton or Spenser. The 
following passage, too, may throw some light on the sub- 
ject. ' My pamphlet .... was composed as for an 
oration before an assembly, and flowed straight from my 
heart, and hence it must be read like a speech. Any one 
who should read it to himself, or aloud, without modu- 
lating his voice, in a uniform tone, like a treatise that is 
merely concerned with ideas, would probably be as much 
puzzled with it as the ordinary reader is with Greek ora- 
tions .... particularly those in Thucydides, before he 
has learnt to read with the ear .... Most of our authors 
do not in the least know and consider, that the old prose 



* History of Greece, vol. iv. pp. 100, 110. 

t The Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, p. 257. 



3 o ISAIAH I. 2 — 9 . STATE OF THE NATION. 



writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience ; 
whilst among us, prose is invariably written for the eye 
alone, at least only for the ear in the case of an easy 
narrative. This is why my style is found so strange and 
unusual, and hence punctuation is so difficult to me, for I 
ought to have many more signs in order to indicate my 
exact intentions. In fact, with all that the writer com- 
poses as if he were speaking, the character of the move- 
ment, and the time, ought to be marked, as in music, for 
the ordinary reader.'"" I suspect this is the key to the 
music of our English Bible and Prayer Book. It also 
illustrates the Masoretic accentuation, of which I have 
spoken above. 

Let us turn to the matter of the prophecy. 

The heavens and earth are constant to the constitution 
and laws imposed on them by their Creator, and to them 
does Jehovah appeal against a nation who have ceased to 
believe in any moral order or government of the world : t 
the dullest animals show an attachment to their owner's 
person, and a recognition of his manner of caring for 
them, though he keeps them only for his own profit ; but 
this people disregard and set at nought their filial relation 
to Jehovah, though he has chosen them out from all man- 
kind to be his own children, bestowed on them the 
peculiar care and love of a father, reared them to man's 
estate by making them a nation, and by a long education 
qualified them to understand as well as to enjoy the bless- 
ings of this adoption. They have made themselves like 
those beasts of burden, loading themselves with their 

* Niebuhr's Life and Letters, vol. i. 
f Lowth here quotes Psalm 1. 3, 4, Micah vi. 1, 2, Deut. xxxii. 1, and 
Deut. xxx. 19 ; and Gesenius Virgil's 

'Esto nunc Sol testis, et hsec mihi Terra vocanti,' &c. — JEn. xii. 176. 
To which, may be added the appeal of Prometheus, — 

1 T Q Slog alQrip, Kai ra%t»7rrepot irvoai, 
7Tora[xwv rt irriyai, ttovtiwv r« KVfiaTtov 
avr)Qi9fxov ysXaOfia, TraufxriTop ts yri, 
Kai tov TravoTTTTjV kvkXiov t)Xiov KaXu>.' 

Msch. From. Vwet. 88. 

And Hamlet's — 

' 0 all ye host of heaven, 0 earth ! ' 
All are founded on the same intuitive feeling of the mind, that the works and 



POLICY OF UZZIAH AND JOTHAM. 



3 1 



iniquities ; so degenerated are they from their true birth- 
right, that they seem to be evil in their very stock and 
breed, like the Canaanites and other accursed races -* — 
' They have forsaken Jehovah, they have despised the 
Holy One of Israel, they are gone away backward.' 

Therefore punishment is coming upon the sinful nation, 
and punishment severe and repeated enough to rouse it 
from its obstinate rebellion, till, while it is adding new 
acts of revolt and apostacy, there seems no place left on 
which to strike again ; as it is become thoroughly diseased 
at heart, it shall suffer outwardly in proportion to its 
inward insensibility ; as there is no soundness, and no 
desire for soundness within, so shall it sink under the 
repeated strokes of a foreign invasion which adds fresh 
wounds to sores already festering, while it longs in vain for 
a deliverer and a healer. The vision of that woe rises 
before the prophet's eyes, and he sees all the national 
fruits of the long and vigorous reigns of Uzziah and 
Jotham swept away. Uzziah had effectually humbled that 
old and troublesome enemy of Judah, the Philistines, dis- 
mantling their fortified cities, and establishing his own 
garrisons in their territory : on the opposite side he had 
reduced the Ammonites to their proper condition of tribu- 
taries, from which they had never lost any opportunity of 
revolting since David conquered them : he had recovered 
the port of Elath on the Red Sea, rebuilt it, and thus, 
after an interval of about eighty years, restored to Judah 
an important share in the commerce of the world : and he 
had strongly fortified Jerusalem, and organised a well- 
armed and disciplined militia, ' that went out to war by 
bands,' that so the people might not be taken from the 
cultivation of the land and other peaceful occupations 

powers of outward nature are an abiding witness for a settled constitution and 
order in the universe, however overlooked or defied. So Wordsworth in his 
Ode to Duty, — 

' Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, 

And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong.' 

Nor should we overlook the contrast of the pantheistic language of the classical 
parallels, with the distinction between the world and its Maker which is so 
clear to the Jew that he does not so much assert as assume it as an axiom im- 
possible to doubt. 

* See below, on chapter xiv. 28. 



32 



FOREIGN INVASION. 



except in regular turns. And while by these means ' his 
name spread abroad, even to the entering in of Egypt, for 
he strengthened himself exceedingly,' he was no less 
active in availing himself of the peace he had secured 
abroad to encourage commerce and agriculture at home, 
he himself setting an example in the latter which his 
nobles were not slow to follow : ' he built towers ' for the 
protection of his flocks ' in the desert ' or commons where 
they pastured, ' and digged many wells, for he had much 
cattle both in the low country and in the plains, husband- 
men also and vinedressers in the mountains and in 
Carmel, for he loved husbandry :' the re-opening of the 
port of Elath would not merely have enabled his mer- 
chant-ships to supply Judah and Jerusalem with the 
luxuries of Africa and India, but would have made Judaea 
the direct natural highway of much of the traffic between 
those countries and Europe which the Phoenicians carried 
on by help of trade-caravans, and which would previously 
have taken a different route ; and while trade and agricul- 
ture thus filled the land with wealth, Egypt supplied them 
with horses and chariots : and what the reign of Uzziah 
had begun, that of Jotham, at the end of half a century, 
was still carrying on.'" And now the prophet beholds all 
overthrown, the cities burned, the cultivated fields and the 
pastures laid waste, and the whole land devoured, plun- 
dered, and devastated, as is the way when foreign and 
barbarian enemies invade a country, t while the inhabi- 
tants look on, unable to resist, and Jerusalem itself, the 

* 2 Chron. xxvi., xxvii. 
f "England is become the residence of foreigners and the property of 
strangers; at the present time there is no Englishman, either earl, bishop, or 
abbot : strangers ail, they prey upon the riches and vitals of England ; nor is 
there any hope of a termination of this misery." — William of Malmsbury, ii. 13. 

' Look on thy country, look on fertile France, 
And see the cities and the towns defaced 
By wasting ruin of the cruel foe. 
See, see, the pining malady of France, 
Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds, 
Which thou thyself hast given her woeful heart.' 

First Fart of King Henry VL in. 3. 

Grotius quotes — 

' Impius heec tarn culta novalia miles habebit ? 
Barbarus has segetes?' — Virg. Fc. i. 71, 72. 



JEHOVAH OF HOSTS. 



33 



only remaining hope, is threatened with siege. Then, by 
one of those transitions and combinations with which the 
imagination can throw a gleam of light and beauty over 
the darkest and most terrific picture, and yet at the same 
time even heighten its truth and force, the wasted fields 
seem to the prophet like the vineyards and cucumber gar- 
dens at the end of the fruit season, when they are indeed 
stripped and trampled, and desolate-looking, yet only 
because the crops have been gathered in for the benefit of 
the husbandman : and the sole surviving capital stands 
there apparently abandoned by its divine watcher and 
keeper, like the cottage or lodge — sometimes a temporary 
booth of branches, or a hammock, but sometimes, no doubt, 
a stone cottage, such as we see in the like vineyards and 
gardens in Provence— which sheltered the keeper of the 
vineyard or garden as long as its fruits could tempt the 
jackal and the fox, and was then shut up for the season, or 
left as useless : yet, inasmuch as it is ' like a besieged 
city,' it is garrisoned as well as beleaguered, and hope 
remains within, though desolation is without.'" And 
then the thoughts and images of selfish prosperity and 
general calamity, of national sins and divine judgments, 
but of a small remnant saved through and out of all, 
» assume another form, and recall the ancient fate of 
those cities which were destroyed because Jehovah could 
not find ten righteous men therein : — ' Except the Lord 
of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we 
should have been as Sodom, we should have been like 
unto Gomorrah.' 

Jehovah of hosts, or of armies, is a favourite expression 
of the Hebrew writers, and especially of Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
Zechariah, and Malachi, by which they recognize him as 
the universal governor of heaven and earth, ' who has 
ordained and constituted the services of men and angels 
in a wonderful order :' — ■ 

' His state 

Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed 

* Knohel would translate ' like a watch tower,' understanding either a 
military post or a tower like those which Uzziah built in ' the wilderness,' 
and which at once protected and sheltered the flocks which pastured in the 
open plains round it. 

D 



34 



THE DAUGHTER OF ZION. 



And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
They also serve who only stand and wait : ' — 

and who employs his kingly and almighty power to rule 
the nations in righteousness, and, as now, both to punish 
and to save his chosen people. Nor need we be deterred 
by grammarians from discovering a like depth and beauty 
of meaning in the phrase just before — ' the daughter of 
Zion,' or doubt that to the mind of the prophet and his 
thoughtful hearers it called up the idea of the nation 
having been brought up by, set apart for, and by 
formal covenant united to, Jehovah ; called his bride ; 
and appointed to show forth, in the constitution, and 
order, and duties, of national society and political life, 
a new and wider manifestation of those laws of God's 
relation with, and government of, man, of which marriage 
was the first type : while the name of Zion would remind 
them of a city founded upon a rock, and that could 
not be moved — set upon a hill, and that could not 
be hid. 

The sin of Sodom is said (Ezekiel xvi. 49) to have 
been pride, fulness of bread, abundance of idleness, and 
contempt of the poor and needy ; their land was one of 
peculiar fertility, and they had given themselves up to a 
mere life of nature, till they wallowed in all the worst sins 
that break out from such a life. National institutions are 
the proper means of preserving a people from, or raising 
them out of, naturalism ; but the prophet protests that his 
countrymen were sunk in it, notwithstanding their national 
polity, and their strict maintenance of its forms. He 
seems to say that the blasted site of the cities of old 
was a perpetual witness to the Jews of God's wrath against 
this sensualism — a witness abiding from generation to 
generation in the very midst of them- — yet they were 
reckless of the warning : just as the Neapolitans seemed 
to Arnold to be when he was contemplating the destruc- 
tion of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and drawing the like 
moral from it. This belief that there is a more than 
accidental relation between moral and physical evils, 
though apparently supported by many facts in the history 
of nations and individuals in all ages, is opposed by the 



ISAIAH I. 10—20. FORMS AND SPIRIT. 35 



logical conclusions from wider and more exact observation, 
as it is by our Lord's declaration that the men on whom 
the tower of Siloam fell were not sinners above all men 
that dwelt in Jerusalem. But such a belief was held by 
Isaiah and all the prophets as a part of their faith in 
God's moral government of the world ; nor can it be 
doubted that physical calamities have, in fact, in all ages 
exercised a moral influence on men's consciences, though 
the action may have been through the imagination and 
not through the reason. 

The prophet kindling at the thought of his own com- 
parison, and feeling how just a one it is, calls on those 
men — rulers and people — who, though professing to ad- 
minister and obey the law of Jehovah, were in heart no 
better than the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, to hear what 
the law of Jehovah is in spirit and in truth. They still 
maintain all the external forms of religion according to 
the established ecclesiastical ritual, but no inward faith 
quickens them. This has ever been the great abuse of 
religious forms in all nations and times. Forms there must 
be ; they are a real, vital part of religion, as the body is 
a real part of the man : but when they lose their life they 
become as worthless and corrupt as a dead body. To 
preserve this life is the difficult task : it must be fed 
direct from heaven through a channel that can only be 
kept open as long, and as far, as man consents that his 
spirit should be raised above the routine of nature and the 
world. And this elevation is so irksome to our nature, it 
is so much pleasanter that morality and religion should go 
on, like digestion, by the unconscious working of a me- 
chanical organization, that men are always yielding to the 
delusion that the thing can be accomplished, — from the 
African or the Buddhist, who multiplies his prayers by 
help of a rotary calabash or drum, to the Bomish or 
Anglican priest, who ' makes God ' with robings, and 
genuflexions, and unintelligible utterances, and the eleva- 
tion of a wafer, or the Protestant divine with his ' Letter 
of Scripture,' and his Articles which are to fasten truth, 
like an idol, ' with nails so that it shall not be moved,' 
and to establish a 1 doctrine and discipline from which he 

D 2 



3 6 LOSS OF NATIONAL BROTHERHOOD. 



will not endure any varying or departing in the least 
degree.' Therefore Isaiah protests in Jehovah's name 
that the Law is not in the forms but in the meaning of 
them : sacrifices of bullocks and goats are worthless if they 
are not the symbols of an actual though inward sacrifice of 
that fleshly will which is separating the worshipper from 
Jehovah's spiritual presence; the multitudes who throng 
the courts of the temple, and think they are keeping the 
command to ' appear before Jehovah,' though their hearts 
are far away, are but treading that command under their 
feet (as the Hebrew word implies) : oblations which ex- 
press no sincere thankfulness are vain : incense with which 
no prayer of the heart ascends is an abomination : new 
moons'" and sabbaths do but mock God when they are 
kept by men who are grinding the faces of the poor with 
unremitted and unrewarded work : the great yearly as- 
semblies are worse than idle types of national brotherhood 
in the midst of universal and habitual oppression and 
misery. And such a national worship and obedience to 
the law as this will obtain nothing from Jehovah in the 
day of calamity : men may lift up their hands in prayer, 
but in vain, while those hands have been so long and deeply 
stained with blood ; they must wash them thoroughly 
(still alluding to the ecclesiastical ritual), by ceasing to do 
evil, and learning to do well ;f they must ' seek justice, 
restrain the oppressor, right the fatherless, maintain the 
.widow's cause.' If they will so reform, and return to true 
obedience to their King and their God, he will himself 
wash them thoroughly from all their iniquity, though it 
be more deeply ingrained than the power of man can reach. 
The word translated reason, means also plead or argue in 
a court of justice, as it does in Job xxiii. 7, and Micah 
vi. 2. The context shows that both ideas must be in- 
cluded here ; for while the whole tone of this prophecy is 

* The first of the month was kept by special public worship, when the 
trumpets were blown (Numbers xxiii. 11 — 15 ; x. 13 ; Psalm lxxxi. 3) ; by rest 
from trade (Amos viii. 5) ; by religious instruction (2 Kings iv. 23) ; and 
perhaps by feasting (1 Sam. xx. 9). 

f The Masoretic punctuation here breaks through the parallelism, but 
perhaps rightly ; just as Shakespeare and Milton occasionally introduce 
rugged or halting lines to give freedom and vigour instead of a too monotonous 
regularity of rhythm. 



ISAIAH I. 21— 27. THE FAITHLESS CITY. 37 



judicial, arraigning the unjust and iniquitous rulers of 
the Jewish nation before the judgment-seat of their 
invisible King, the reformation, which is the end of 
judgment, is never lost sight of, the fatherly character 
of the Judge is always present, and he reasons with 
the culprit, and is willing to be reasoned with. He 
offers them the like justice and mercy which he calls on 
them to show to others. They are to come into court 
not merely to receive condemnation but to argue out 
their own cause, and to hear the reasons of their sentence, 
nay, to obtain its reversal if they will. For he remem- 
bers his covenant, and is not a God of mere power and 
wrath, nay, not even of mere unbending law, but a 
living Lord of righteousness and love, resolved indeed 
to maintain absolutely and without infringement his own 
holiness, and justice, and truth, yet desiring that the 
most disobedient should still depart from his sin, and 
return and live again under his holy constitution and 
government, and enjoy the blessings of so doing, loving 
God, and knowing that God loves him : therefore, in 
the midst of all these threatenings, God appeals to the 
people themselves whether he is not reasonable in his 
conduct towards them. Thus the word is at once expres- 
sive of the deepest truth and meaning, and in accor- 
dance with the actual practice of the Hebrew institutions, 
which preserved much of their patriarchal character, as 
those of all Eastern nations do to this day, even when 
most corrupt. • 

' The faithful city is become a harlot ' : — Jerusalem, the 
daughter of Zion, the wife of the Holy One of Israel, has 
broken the bond of her covenant with him, has set at 
nought the divine constitution and order in which he 
originally placed, and has continued to sustain, her : and, 
as the outward consequence and sign of this spiritual de- 
fection, has actually fallen to the worship of other gods. 
Throughout this prophecy Isaiah dwells chiefly on the sins 
of the princes and rulers of the nation, and only inciden- 
tally on those of the people ; and accordingly, he now 
dilates on the characteristic vices of the former, which are 
the fruits of their national unfaithfulness. Social and 



3S 



THE TRUE REFORMATION. 



political morality have vanished along with religious faith ; 
thieves and murderers are found instead of virtuous 
citizens ;* the nobles and men in authority are the first 
to break the laws they should enforce ; the administration 
of justice is so corrupt that the judges take bribes, con- 
nive at the robbers whose booty they share, and permit 
the rich man to pervert the law for the oppression of the 
fatherless and the widow, who have no patrons to demand, 
and no money to buy, justice : and thus the aristocracy, 
setting aside all belief that they hold their wealth and 
power in trust from God for the benefit of the people 
under them, do but employ these as irresistible engines for 
breaking down all rights that can oppose them in their 
pursuit of luxury and vice. Therefore will the mighty 
Lord of the nation put forth his strength, and purge 
out these iniquities as the metal smelter separates the dross 
with alkali (the literal sense of ' purely'), destroying those 
who have defied and renounced him, and by means of this 
severe discipline restoring the nation to its former and 
true character of a people faithful to God, and dealing 
uprightly with each other. ' Zion shall be redeemed ' 
through this execution of judgment, and her restored and 
reformed children shall dwell within her walls in righteous- 
ness. ' Converts ' implies restoration alike from captivity 
and from moral bondage : it is a cognate word to that 
translated 'return' in chapter x. 21. 

It may be asked, At what former period of Jewish 
history did the nation deserve that character for faith and 
righteousness which Isaiah ascribes to it 'at the begin- 
ning ? ' and at what subsequent time was it restored to the 
condition which he promises £ afterwards ? ' I must reply, 
— not by pointing back to the days of Moses or Samuel, 
or David, or Solomon, nor forward to those of Hezekiah, 
Josiah, or the Maccabees ; for it could be shown that the 
men who lived at each of those times were ready to cry 
out against their special corruption, but — by reference to 
that universal habit of men's minds to suppose a past and 
hope for a future, realization in actual life, of their ideals 

* The word ' lodging ' is suggested by the image of a populous city ; 
' silver ' by its wealth ; ' wine ' by its luxury. 



POLITICAL IDEALS. 



39 



of human perfection. Few men, in any time or country, 
have that power of metaphysical abstraction which can 
enable them to contemplate ideals as such ; and even they, 
when they descend to practical life, and the practical 
instruction of the men around them, find it necessary to 
translate their ideas into the popular language. The 
oppressed Saxon prayed for the restoration, by his 
Norman tyrant, of the laws of Edward, though it would 
have been difficult for him to prove the personal merits of 
that king as a legislator or ruler ; the Long Parliament 
based all its demands on the ancient rights of the 
Commons ; the French and English ^Republicans of the 
last century referred to an original social contract ; and in 
our own day the Church of the first centuries and the 
chivalry of the middle ages, supply to considerable classes 
a local habitation and name for their ideals of life, though 
it would not be easily shown that there ever was an 
adequate historical realization of any one of them. We all 
feel indeed that there is a fact no less than a truth recog- 
nized in such language, both as to the past and the future. 
There is a continual progress in the world, and every step 
of it is gained by the triumph of some good over some 
evil, and consequently by some realization in fact of what, 
till it had so triumphed, could only assert itself in idea. 
Thus the new is always the restoration of the old, and 
the old the promise of the new, and the whole ideal of 
time is in light, though the particular moment as it passes 
is marked by shadow. It will become increasingly ap- 
parent as we go on, how important an element of the 
prophetic character and office this belief and promise of the 
realization of a perfect commonwealth was, and in what 
relation it stands to the search or longing for such a 
society by the philosophers and philanthropists of other 
nations and times. 

But to return to the detail of the text before us. In 
the judgments and the restoration which the prophet fore- 
tells, he declares that the people shall learn the worthless- 
ness of the idols which they have been worshipping under 
the oak trees, and in the sacred groves and gardens. The 
worship of the High Places, as I have shown above (page 



4 o ISAIAH I. 28 — 31. DESTRUCTION OF IDOLS. 



was partly a local worship of Jehovah, which only became 
irregular and blameable in later times ; but there was also 
a widespread worship of Baal, Astarte, and Moloch, the old 
gods of the Canaanites and other nations, in sacred groves 
and gardens as well as on the hill-tops — a worship of 
impersonated and deified sensuality and cruelty — which 
sometimes even established itself within the precincts of 
the temple itself, and was still more readily blended with, 
or substituted for, the worship of Jehovah in the High 
Places. And this idolatrous worship was going on in 
Judasa during the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, at the same 
time with the temple services, as appears from 2 Kings 

xv. 3, 4, compared with 2 Chron. xxvii. 2.* In the day 
of judgment and restoration, says the prophet, these men 
who have been flourishing in their sin like their oaks, and 
living in pleasures like those of their well-watered gardens, 
shall find that the idols to which those oaks and gardens 
are dedicated, have no power to save them from a destruc- 
tion which shall make them ' as an oak whose leaf fadeth, 
and as a garden that hath no water,' — images which will 
be the more forcible if we remember that in a southern 
climate, trees fade rather from excessive heat than from 
seasonable cold, and a garden without water is a mere 
desert of sand. Then shall the strong, the mighty, and 
the unjust ruler become tow, and his idols, the work of 
his hands, a spark ; they shall both burn together, and no 
man shall quench them. 

In verse 29, is an instance of what seemed to Lowth's 
classical taste a corrupt reading : — ( They shall be ashamed 
of the oaks which ye have desired.' But this variation of 
the persons of the verb is not unusual in Hebrew, and cer- 
tainly no corruption. Indeed, if we look at Psalm xci., 
which is very artistically constructed, we shall see reason to 
think that what jars so harshly on a classically trained ear 
was a beauty to the Hebrew poets. I dwell the more upon 
these peculiarities of idiom and composition, because I 
believe that we cannot understand the meaning of Isaiah, 
any more than we can of Shakspeare, unless our minds are 

* For allusions to the subject at other times, see Deut. xvi. 21, 1 Kings 

xvi. 23, 2 Kings xvi. 4, 2 Chron. xxviii 4, Ezekiel vi. 13. 



LANG UA GE A ND NA TIONAL CHAR A CTER. 4 1 



emancipated from servile adherence to classical rules. Eacli 
language and literature lias its own laws, and these are 
derived from and connected with a distinctive national 
mind, which expresses itself in its own way through the 
great writers of each nation : and thus language becomes a 
key to national character. 



CHAPTER III. 



ISAIAH II., III., IV. — HEBREW GENIUS IMAGINATIVE RATHER THAN LOGICAL.— 

PERFECT AND IMPERFECT TENSES IN HEBREW. — THE LAST DAYS. CONTRAST 

OF THE IDEAL AND ACTUAL STATE OF THE NATION. — FOREIGN INFLUENCES. 

— PRIVATE IDOLATRY. — POLITICAL MATERIALISM. NATIONAL DECAY. 

LAWS OF GOD'S GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD. GOOD AND EVIL OF COM- 
MERCE. HEBREW MATRONS. FEMALE LUXURY. — ITS PUNISHMENT. — THE 

BRANCH OF JEHOVAH. — THE RESTORED THOUGH HUMBLED NATION. 

THE next discourse, consisting of chapters ii., iii., iv., is 
entitled, ' The Word that Isaiah the son of Amos 
saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.' The propriety of 
applying the phrase ' saw ' to ' the Word ' is apparent, if 
we refer ourselves to the mental process which takes place 
in meditating upon any important truth, especially while 
the vividness of the first discovery lasts ; and still more is 
it obvious, as we read the discourse itself, and look at its 
various pictures of military power, maritime commerce, 
wealth, luxury, pride, selfishness, and irreligion ; of 
political misgovernment, anarchy, and decay ; and of 
ultimate reform and restoration. 

No arguments need be added to prove that the pro- 
phecy depicts the state of society in the period between 
the latter end of the reign of Uzziah and the beginning 
of that of Ahaz, and that we may properly fix the date 
of its delivery within those limits, and when the pro- 
spects of the reign of Ahaz were coming into view. The 
initial £ And ' here, as in chapters vi. 1 ; vii. 1 ; viii. 1 ; 
and elsewhere, may be among the indications that the 
book has been revised and edited by the author as a 
whole. 

The opening paragraph — a passage of aphoristic com- 
pleteness and beauty, and here serving as a text to the 



ISAIAH II 2. HEBREW PAST AND FUTURE. 43 



subsequent discourse — is found also, with a few verbal 
alterations, in Isaiah's contemporary, Micah (chap. iv. 
1 — 3). Conjecture has variously attributed it to each of 
these prophets, and to some older one, copied by both : 
the last is, perhaps, the more probable supposition, though 
the evidence is not sufficient for certainty. 

This description of ' the Last Days ' — which in the 
Hebrew begins, 4 And it hath come to pass (rpn perf.) . . 
the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be (/"P.rP imperf. or 
flit), established,' &c. — is an instance of the use which I 
have already referred to of the perfect tense to express the 
certain future. Its explanation, in as far as this is the 
place for considering it, seems to be that the structure of 
such a passage as that before us is imaginative, not logical 
— a picture, not a statement. The speaker completely 
projects himself into "the last days ;" he is there, he finds 
them come ; he looks about him to see what is actually 
going on, and sees that the mountain of Jehovah's house is 
about to be — still in process of being — established at the 
head of the mountains ; he looks again, and the nations 
have already arrived at the place prepared for them, yet so 
freshly that they are still calling one another on ; and as 
they come up they find that the King they seek is already 
there, and has effected some of his judgments and decisions 
before they arrive for their turn. 

So thoroughly does this imaginativeness pervade the 
language not only of the prophets but of the historians, so 
habitually has the imaginative and not (as with us) the 
logical faculty dictated the laws of Hebrew grammar, that 
the form ' and it hath come to pass ' in the first line, 
' refers always to a future event ;' while that of ( shall 
be ' in the second, is usually equivalent to the tyevero of 
historical narration.* And the subject is still more clearly 
explained in the general rule that in continued narrations 
of the past, only the first verb stands in the perfect tense, 
the others being in the imperfect or future ; and on the 
contrar}^, in continued descriptions of the future, the first 
verb is in the future or imperfect, while the rest are in the 
perfect. Thus in Genesis i. 1 : — ' In the beginning God 

* Gesenius, lexicon, word nVf- 



44 



THE HEBREW MIND 



created (perf.) the heavens and the earth : And God said 
(imperf. or fut.) Let there be light, and there was (imperf.) 
light : And God saw,' &c. And just the reverse in 
Isaiah vii. 17, ff. : — 'Jehovah will bring (fut. or imperf) 
upon thee and upon thy people, days such as have not 
come since ' &c. ' And it hath (perf.) happened on that 
day . . . And they have (perf.) come.'"* In both these ex- 
amples the speaker evidently places himself in the midst of 
the events themselves, describing the past creation as it would 
have been seen by that eye that ' was there or ever the 
earth was, while as yet he had not made the land nor the 
fields,' t or picturing the future as Ahaz would realize it 
after it had become the past. 

Nor is it only in the Hebrew language and its grammar, 
that this characteristic appears : it pervades the whole genius 
of the nation, the structure and growth of their laws and 
institutions, and the acts and habits of their legislators 
and statesmen, as well as the writings of their poets and 
historians : they are ' of imagination all compact ;' a 
very ' nation of prophets ; ' the vision of a perfect, and 
therefore future still more than past or present, kingdom 
of Jehovah, is always before them, and to its realization as 
their goal, and their appointed rest, they press forward 
through the mere actual and present. It may be difficult 
for an Englishman, in our nineteenth century, to enter into 
this state and habit of mind, and so into that creative 
faculty or power of prophecy which we no longer possess 
in its ancient form. But it is a difficulty somewhat 
analogous to that which we find in realizing the state of 
mind which created languages and mythologies, and which 
in those ways also was so highly imaginative, that in the 
present stage of the human race, and the now predomi- 
nating development of the reasoning faculties, we have no 
corresponding inward experience. { Yet the faculty of 

* See the Grammars of Ewald and G-esenius on these tenses. 

f Proverbs, viii. 22—30. The whole passage bears on this point in a 
noticeable manner. 

X * It may be observed as a general fact,' says Dr. Prichard, ' that Lan- 
guages appear to have become more permanent as we come down towards 
later times. During the last ten or perhaps the last fifteen centuries, they 
have undergone few alterations except through the effect of conquest, or the 
intermixture of nations. The Bretons .... are still easily intelligible to 



IMAGINATIVE RATHER THAN LOGICAL. 45 



imagination still exists in us ; and if we study its character 
and workings in our own minds, and in the writings of the 
poets of our own, and of other times ; if we meditate 
upon the distinctive features of the Hebrew mind, litera- 
ture, language, and institutions, in their action and re- 
action upon each other, and as they correspond with, or 
differ from those of other nations ; if we consider that 
there is a growth (with its consequent losses as well as 
gains) of the human race, no less than of its several families 
and individual men ; if, lastly, we believe that these charac- 
teristics of the Hebrew mind were so heightened, adapted, 
and directed by the influence of political institutions, and 
local and historical circumstances, as that men chosen out 

the natives of Wales. . . . The Scots who emigrated from the north of 

Ireland to Argyleshire can still converse with the natives of Ireland. 

Languages, by intermixture of nations, become disintegrated ; they lose part 
of their grammatical modifications. ... In the mean time no new forms of 
human speech are produced : no new varieties of inflection expressive of the 
modification of ideas by changes in the endings or the initial syllables of 
words are ever attempted : particles and auxiliaries are inserted to supply the 
want of obsolete inflections. Formations of language and the development of 
grammatical systems have long ceased. As in geology, we now only witness 
the disintegration of what the first ages produced. How different was the 
habit of the human mind with regard to language in the age when the San- 
skrit, the Greek, the Latin, and the Mseso-Grothic, idioms were developed 
from one common original ! ' — Researches into the Physical Hist, of Mankind, 
ii. 221, 222. The whole paragraph is most interesting, as showing man's 
original powers of language -making, and their gradual cessation. 

And K. 0. Miiller thus speaks of Mythology : — ' But how can we arrive at 
an idea of its (the Mythus) real nature and import ? Such an idea cannot be 
attained a priori, as we have it only from experience ; neither is it immediately, 
and of itself, intelligible, being utterly unknown as a product of our times. It is 
a purely historical idea ; an idea, moreover, by which a creation of very remote 
times is to be conceived. It cannot possibly be arrived at otherwise than 
historically. But how is its historical perception possible, the mythus itself 
being the only source of the idea of the mythus, and appearing, too, in a 
form different from its contents ? In the statement of an historical fact the 
form and the contents correspond; an acquaintance with the language forms 
the bridge which leads from one to the other. But here they lie further 
apart, and the path must first be sought, is itself a problem. In other words, 
mythi must be interpreted, must be explained, ere we can attain a knowledge 
of their contents. This must be done in a thousand individual instances ere 
we shall be able to seize the essence of the mythus as a general idea. And 
then the question still remains, whether we can express the knowledge thus 
attained by an idea such as passes current amongst us, or by a simple combi- 
nation of such ideas ; whether we do not find something compounded, accord- 
ing to our notions, of multifarious, widely separated, and heterogeneous 
materials, the union of which is based on a mode of thinking entirely different 
from ours.' — Scientific Mythology, translated by Leitch, p. 6. 

The practice of sacrifice by all the nations of antiquity, with its abandon- 
ment by those of Christendom, as also by the Mahometans, is another of the 
changes in kind, and not merely in degree, of the mental habits of a large 
part of the human race. 



4 6 



ISAIAH II 2—9. THE IAST DAYS. 



of this nation might, without any violent, arbitrary, or in 
any way monstrous, subversion of their human nature and 
faculties, be made the fit instruments of God's revelation 
of himself to men : — then we shall perhaps find that there 
is a rational and intelligible idea of prophecy attainable by 
us ; and that in proportion as we realize it, it will make 
clear the dark and difficult places in the writings of the 
prophets, and deliver us from the fear of having to choose 
between interpretations fairly obnoxious to the charge of 
introducing the doctrines of superstition, and even magic, 
into religion, and those of a sceptical criticism which is 
often as regardless of historical and literal fact as of true 
IDhilosophy and Christian faith. Historical criticism, like 
comparative physiology, obtains its results by ascertaining 
the resemblances and the differences of very various forms of 
life under various conditions of time and place. And it is 
by this method that we must seek the key to many diffi- 
culties in Jewish, as well as other ancient history, which 
the destructive critic gets rid of by a mere reference to the 
standard of his own age and country. 

Isaiah then, ' rapt into future times,' sees the throne of 
the Lord of Israel established in sovereignty over all the 
nations of the earth, and they becoming willing subjects to 
him, and friendly fellow citizens to each other. The 
nations attain to true liberty, for they come to submit 
themselves to the righteous laws and institutions, and to 
the wise and gracious word and direction, of that King 
whose service is perfect freedom ; and to true brotherhood, 
for they leave their old enmities and conflicts, and make 
the same Lord their judge, and umpire, and reconciler. 
And all this, not by some newly invented device of the 
nations, some new result of their own civilization, but by 
the carrying out of the old original purpose and plan of 
God, that his chosen people of the Jews should be the 
ministers of these good things, and that in them should 
all nations of the earth be blessed, — that ' out of Zion 
should go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from 
Jerusalem.' This is the vocation of the Hebrew people. 
This, says the prophet, is the key to all our duties as a 
nation, this is the master-light to guide us to right action. 



TRUE AND FALSE PHILANTHROPY. 



Then, in words which are half-appeal, half-declaration 
that the appeal is in vain, he exclaims : — ' 0 house of 
Israel, come ye, and let us walk in the light of Jehovah.' 
The house of Israel is, indeed, willing enough for, and is 
already practising, a universal brotherhood of nations, but 
quite of another fashion from this. They have filled them- 
selves to repletion with the idolatries and divinations of 
the Syrians, Chaldseans, and Philistines ; and on every 
side have joined themselves to the heathens by marriages, 
political alliances, commercial intercourse, and adoption of 
religious rites. Juventutem studiis extemis degenerare, 
was the complaint of the Eomans who were still faithful to 
the ancient discipline, in the time of Nero* ; and even in 
our own Christian times, and among Christian nations, 
these are great causes of national deterioration ; and 
Mosesj- and the prophets are proved by the result to have 
judged rightly, for their own times, that nothing but the 
strict exclusion of such foreign influences could preserve 
the moral, political, and religious nationality of their 
country. I would urge the thoughtful consideration of 
these verses (2 — 9) on any one who is perplexed by the 
confident assertion of writers who prefer vague declama- 
tion to close investigation and reasoning, that the Hebrew 
prophets were actuated by a bitter hatred of foreigners. 
He will, I think, discover (from this and such like study) 
that they were possessed by views and hopes of a philan- 
thropy which even our own times have not been able to 
extend : they longed for fellowship with all men, under 
the only conditions in which fellowship is possible ; they 
desired an universal communion of virtue, humanity, and * 
goodness, and could not be content to have a general 
licence of vice, brutality, and wickedness instead ; and 
they advocated what they saw, and what all history has . 
proved, to be the only way of avoiding the one and 
securing the other. 

For the like reasons Moses had forbidden, and Isaiah 

* Tacit. Ann. xiv. 20. quoted by Vitringa. 

f I do not mean to pronounce on the date or authorship of the Pentateuch 
in its present form, though I have no doubt of the antiquity of its substance : 
but in any case Moses is as truly the representative of Hebrew, as Lycurgus 
is of Spartan, legislation. 



43 



WEALTH, LUXURY, AND LDOLS. 



here proceeds (no doubt with a reference to the law of 
Moses) to censure, the accumulation of wealth, and the 
multiplying horses and chariots. The nation had come to 
the state from which Moses would have kept it back if 
possible : it was rich, luxurious, and put its trust in the 
physical force of its standing army, and meanwhile had 
forgotten its divine King, and the covenant between them. 
And therefore the land had become ' full of idols.' It 
has been noticed that these were doubtless worshipped in 
many groves and high places during the reigns of Uzziah 
and Jotham, though these kings formally upheld the 
national worship of the true God ; but we may (with 
Yitringa) especially refer this passage to the Teraphim, 
the Penates or Lares ' which they made each one for 
himself to worship,' and to divine with, in their own 
house ; — a species of idolatry which from the earliest times 
is found among those who yet professed the worship of 
Jehovah. The whole ecclesiastical scheme of the Hebrew 
polity tended to elevate the members of the nation out of 
a selfish state, and bring them to a consciousness of the 
dignity and virtue of being c members one of another ; ' 
while the effect of this private superstition, which had 
filled the land with idols, must have been the exact 
contrary. So many gods, so many centres of social attrac- 
tion and repulsion. A state of things in which every man 
has his own god in his own house, is mere naturalism, 
Shammanism, or Fetish-worship, and cannot rise above the 
horde-life, into which family or patriarchal life sinks, if 
not comprehended in and upheld by national institutions, 
'and especially a national worship. The bond of political 
society in Greece, or in Rome, was the national recognition 
of Apollo or Pallas, Jupiter or Mars. And if faith was 
thus potent as long as it remained sincere, though its 
objects were imaginary, not less was it necessary to the 
people whose God was Jehovah. But since they have 
forsaken him, in the office to which he had appointed 
them among the nations, the prophet declares that 
Jehovah too hath forsaken them, and will not forgive 
them. 

Jehovah hath forsaken them as their father and friend, 



ISAIAH II 10—19. DAYS OF JUDGMENT. 49 



but he comes to call them to account as their judge. 
Men of every rank, high and low, have been humbling 
themselves everywhere before their idols ; they shall now 
be compelled to bow down before Jehovah, for all their 
haughtiness. The day of the Lord of Hosts is at hand ; — 
that crisis or ' day of judgment,' in which he who 
upholds and directs the universe and its inhabitants by 
righteous laws and administration executes on the im- 
penitent breakers of those laws the sentence which he has 
pronounced against them. The Flood, the destruction of 
Sodom, the invasion of Judaea in the reigns of Ahaz and 
Hezekiah, the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar or 
by Titus, were held by the Jewish prophets and preachers — 
as the like national crises in ancient and in modern history 
have ever been held by Christian philosophers and his- 
torians — to be ' Days of the Lord,' in which he has 
come to judge the earth ; and partial anticipations of the 
last judgment of the world. The wealth and rank of the 
criminals shall not save them : though they tower above 
their fellows, as the cedars of Lebanon and the oaks of 
Basan (of which they build their palaces) tower above the 
common shrubs ; though they stand like their native moun- 
tains, and like the fortifications which they have added 
to those mountains in defiance of all invaders ; though 
they are prepared to resist the storms of fortune like the 
great merchant ships by which they have amassed their 
wealth, and gratified every desire for luxury ;* yet all 
shall be brought down to the dust. They shall vainly 
seek to escape, as unarmed peasants or women fly into the 
nearest cave or hole when they hear the hoofs of some 
plundering tribe of Edom or Ishmael from the desert : but 
the judgment of Jehovah shall reach them, as the earth- 
quake (then, as now, not uncommon in Judaea) would 
bring down the rock on him who sought refuge in it. 

* The words ' images of desire ' might mean idols : — (compare chapters i. 
29, xliv. 9 with Genesis iii. 6. ; Levit. xxvi. 1. ; Numh. xxxiii. 52.) but the 
parallelism makes it more probable that they describe either the gay flags and 
sails and gilded work of the ships (' the poop was beaten gold, purple the 
sails . . the oars were silver'), or the objects of luxury which their owners 
traded in. The phrase ' ships of Tarshish ' (Tartessus in Spain), applied to 
merchant-ships which could only have traded in the south, is exactly like our 
usage of ' China cups,' ' Japan trays,' &c. 

E 



ISAIAH II 20— III 13. COMING WOES 



And as such fugitives carry in their hands their most pre- 
cious goods, but are glad in their extremity to abandon 
these to the moles and bats of the caves, that they may more 
freely use their hands in clambering into the safe recesses, 
so the idolatrous nation shall be obliged to abandon its 
false gods. Such is man, when his trust is in idols, and 
when Jehovah is not upholding, but opposing, him. 

The prophet now proceeds to tell, in literal and detailed 
language, of the national calamities he has just before 
described metaphorically ; and to declare the worthlessness 
of man's political devices to stay the ruin. At the time 
Isaiah spoke, the nation and its capital city and seat of 
government might seem to the worldly-wise too firmly 
established to fear the wrath, or need the help, of a God 
whom they had forgotten as a dream among the realities 
of life. The fortified frontiers and the standing army 
might not have been tested for some time, but doubtless they 
were as invincible as in the days of the great Uzziah; and 
Judah's power was not merely in its army, but still more in 
its civilization, in its system of laws, its religious and political 
culture, its statesmen versed in affairs, its feudal aristo- 
cracy, its ranks and dignities, its manufacturing skill and 
industry, and its diviners and soothsayers. How could 
such a state be in any danger ? So argued the shrewd 
man of the world in Isaiah's day, just as he still does in 
our own. He could not see that the soldiers were a set of 
machines incapable of standing against an invasion of men 
full of fierce life ; that the law was so administered as to 
be an engine of oppression instead of justice ; that the pro- 
phets, the teachers of the people, employed their gifts and 
opportunities of teaching — just as the advocates and 
judges did theirs — to prove good to be evil and evil good, 
to justify prosperous wickedness, and to undermine all 
faith in moral and political righteousness. But Isaiah 
foresees that a slight irregularity in the working of this 
vast machinery of imposture will throw the whole into 
confusion. It may hold together for the life of the present 
king (though even his matured state-craft had no doubt 
done more than it could hope to do again), but the life 
and death of rulers are among the events which God 



ON THE ACCESSION OF AHAZ. 



retains in his own power ; and when the weak and worthless 
youth Ahaz sits on the throne of his fathers, and like 
Kehoboam of old forsakes the old statesmen, and ' con- 
sults with the young men that were grown up with him,' 
and were like himself mere boys in mind and character 
even more than in age — when God gives children to he 
their princes and babes to rule over them, it will be seen 
what their boasted order of society is worth."* The sove- 
reign authority having fallen into powerless hands, there 
will be nothing to restrain the strong man from oppress- 
ing his weaker neighbour, or the foolish and the base 
from triumph over the wise and the honourable. Foreign 
invasion shall take advantage of this internal disorder, and 
the heads of tribes and families, the centres of Jewish 
political life, being killed or carried into captivity, there 
will be a general dissolution of society ; and when, 
under the sense of this calamity, a man shall try and 
restore order and unity by calling on his elder brother — 
on whom devolve the rights and duties of the absent 
father — to take up his position as that father s representa- 
tive, and to become a binder-up of their wounds, then will 
he refuse with the selfishness of despair, declaring that the 
ruin is too great to be repaired, and that he himself is too 
much sunk under it even to make the attempt, f How 
the men who heard these words of Isaiah experienced their 
truth a few years after, we learn from 2 Chron. xxviii., xxix. 
6 — 9. They were again fulfilled in the reign of Manasseh ; 
and again far more heavily in the days of Jeremiah, whose 
Prophecy and Lamentations describe the famine ; the loss 
of all who could have given aid by vision, counsel, or the 
sword ; the imbecility of the king, who dared not rule 
according to the dictates of his own conscience or judg- 

* ' Fire and slaughter raged on all sides. The country [Normandy during 
the minority of William the Conqueror], formerly most flourishing, was now 
torn with intestine broils, and divided at the pleasure of the plunderers ; so 
that it was justly entitled to proclaim, " Woe to the land whose sovereign is a 
child.'" — William of Malmsbury, iii. 

4 'Tis much when sceptres are in children's hands, 
But more when envy href ds unkind division ; 
Then comes the ruin, then begins confusion.' 

First Part of King Henry VI, iv. 1. 
t Compare the corresponding state of the kingdom of iSamaria, at the 
period; Isaiah, ix. 17 — 20; Hosea, vii. 1 — 7. 

E 2 



52 ISAIAH III. 14—24. 72^ SELFISH NOBLES. 

ment, but himself avowed that ' the king was not he who 
could do anything against' the people about him ; the 
tyranny of the great men during these calamities ; and the 
general depravity and dissolution of all moral and political 
order. If we compare the prophecy and history of the 
one period with those of the other, and both with like 
periods in the history of other nations (as, for instance, 
before the French or English Kevolutions, not to speak of 
still later times), we see how the prophets announced the 
eternal and immutable laws of God's government of the 
world, to be again and again brought into operation, and 
accomplished, in the events of successive ages. 

The prophet will not for a moment lose sight of the 
moral character of these national calamities ; each fresh 
prediction of them is followed by the declaration that they 
are ' the fruit of their doings,' ' the reward of their hands :' 
— 'Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen, because their 
tongue and their doings are against Jehovah, to provoke 
the eyes of his glory. The show of their countenance is 
against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom, they 
hide it not.' 

The selfish aristocracy have abandoned all their proper 
— patriarchal and paternal — duties to their people, for the 
business of wringing from them the means of unbounded 
luxury. This was a consequence of the commercial spirit 
absorbing the aristocratic or patriarchal element which ought 
to have limited and purified it. Commerce is perhaps one 
of the most dangerous, as well as one of the most impor- 
tant, of national developments. Its good is as real as its 
evil ; it is in many obvious respects a far better source and 
occasion for national and international activity than its only 
substitute, war : but the thoughtful student of history and 
politics does not need to be told that even war has sometimes 
proved more humanizing than commerce ; and still less, 
that the latter as certainly as the former turns to mere cor- 
ruption and political degeneracy, if it be not duly balanced 
by other elements of national life.* And if modern philo- 

* 'The philosophical thinkers on politics,' says Mr. Grote, 'conceived 
(and to a great degree justly, as I shall show hereafter), that the conditions of 
security in the ancient world imposed upon the citizens generally the abso- 



THE LUXURY OF THE WOMEN. 



53 



sophy is right in considering *that eacli of the nations of 
antiquity were fitted to exhibit the separate working of 
one or two of the more elementary laws of politics, though 
not to afford a field for those vast and complicated 
problems which modern societies have to solve, then was 
Moses right in making laws to discourage the money-making 
spirit and practice of which the results would be such 
as Isaiah here denounces ; results quite preclusive of the 
effectual development of that idea which it was the very 
end of the existence of the Hebrew polity to develop. 

Connected with the grasping, money-loving spirit of the 
great and rich men is that of pampered luxury in the 
women. The nobleman has substituted mere greedy blood- 
sucking with the forms of law for a kind paternal care and 
guidance of his dependants ; and the lady has turned that 
feminine delicacy and gentleness which she should have 
employed in refining and humanizing the relations of 
domestic life, and thence spreading i# influence through- 
out society, into haughty exclusiveness and a love of dress 
and luxury, gradually degenerating to sensuality and licen- 
tiousness. 

It always seems to me that Isaiah marks the fact of the 
social importance of the Hebrew women (which we other- 
wise know to have been so much more like that of the 
Roman than the Greek matron), and his own mournful 
though indignant sense of what high dignity and duty 
they had abandoned, in the prominence which he gives 
to the subject by his elaborate description -of the luxury 
of the daughters of Zion. We see before us the J ewish 
ladies, ' walking and mincing as they go,' with haughtily 
tossed head, and wanton eyes, and hear the tinkling of the 
mimic fetters of gold with which their ankles are encircled ; 
they wear the fine white linen of Egypt, and their long 
robes are rich with embroidery ; the turban shows its 

lute necessity of keeping up a military spirit and willingness to brave at all 
times personal hardship and discomfort; so that increase of wealth, on 
account of the habits of self-indulgence which it commonly introduces, was 
regarded by them with more or less of disfavour.' — History of Greece, iii. 151. 
And again : — ' There was a considerable body of ancient sentiment, and that, 
too, among high-minded and intelligent men, which regarded gold and silver 
as a cause of mischief and corruption, and of which the stmza of Horace 
(Od. in. iii. 49) is an echo — ' Aarum irrepertum,' &c.' — Ibid. ix. 320. 



54 ISAIAH III. 29 — IV. 1. THE DESOLATION 



wearer's taste, or the open network the beauty of her hair; 
the large veil, the ancient dress of the modest Hebrew 
woman of every rank, is now adapted to the fashion of the 
day, or superseded by the lighter mantilla of lace or gauze 
thrown gracefully over the head and shoulders ; each face 
glistens with ear-drops and nose-jewels; from the chains 
about each neck hang the ornamental crescent, the amulet 
with its magical characters graven on the gem, the little 
mirror, or the scent-box ; or we notice another capricious 
fashion, where a purse is fastened to the broad girdle of 
silk embroidered with gold, and the mirror is carried in a 
hand loaded with bracelets and rings. We turn to look 
again, and the squalid filth and disease of poverty and the 
prison are before us: — 'Instead of perfume there is stench, 
and instead of a girdle a rope, and instead of well-set hair 
baldness, and instead of a costly robe a girding of sack- 
cloth, and branding instead of beauty.' 

The prophet seem* to answer (in verse 25) the incredu- 
lous question, How can this ever be ; what danger is there 
of its befalling us ? As though he had said, You are 
living in worldliness and selfishness, in the neglect of all 
relationships, and you shall feel what it is to be stripped 
of them all, when your husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers 
fall in battle, that you may know what you are out of the 
order in which God has placed you, and which you have 
renounced. When those of you who still remain in your 
desolate homes are sitting in sackcloth and ashes in token 
of your grief ; or, still worse, when your foreheads are 
scarred by the slave-master's brand, when your rich ap- 
parel is stripped off by your ruthless captors, and when 
the sun beats on your heads, from which they have cut 
your hair, and you sink with hunger, thirst, weariness, 
and degradation, while driven naked and like herds of 
cattle in the train of the conquerors who have laid waste 
your homes, — then you shall know that it is Jehovah who 
' hath made bald the crown of the head of the daughters 
of Zion, and discovered their shame.' * 

Then he turns abruptly from the daughters, to the 

* See further as to the treatment of captives in war, on Isaiah xx., ani 
compare Euripides Troad : 141 ff., quoted by Knobel. 



OF THE DAUGHTERS OF ZION. 



55 



Daughter, of Zion, gathering them together in their proper 
representative, the licentious and rebellious nation, the 
faithless bride of the Holy One of Israel. He employs no 
arguments to prove the connection between the selfish 
luxury of the women and the decay of public virtue : their 
consciences cannot deny that their sin is both a cause and 
an effect of the national unrighteousness, and to their con- 
science he appeals direct, by simply announcing the im- 
pending judgment : — 1 Thy men shall fall by the sword, 
and thy mighty in the war :' — and the gates of Jerusalem, 
the places of resort for business or for pleasure, which now 
resound with the cheerful hum of prosperous throngs, 
shall echo with the voice of the bereaved, the destitute, or 
the captive, filling the air (as the manner of eastern 
nations was and is) with their wailings ; and She, the 
widowed and childless City, shall sit upon the ground, as 
mourners used to sit, and as she was represented eight 
hundred years afterwards (and may still be seen), on the 
medals of her conquerors, Vespasian and Titus. 

The Jewess, like the ancient Eoman, or modern English, 
woman, was called by her husband's name ; and she prized 
the honour of wedlock, and dreaded the reproach of child- 
lessness, at least as much as either of these ; but we must 
contrast the dignified expression of these feelings by Sarah, 
Hannah, and Elizabeth, nay, even that of the jealous and 
petulant Rachel, with the exhibition which the prophet 
now contemplates in his mind's eye, in order to see the 
picture of social disorganization which he sees. If a harem 
of wives and concubines was still a part of the king's state 
in Isaiah's time, though we have no proof of this, it is quite 
improbable that polygamy was the common custom of 
the nation, or that they had not long passed out of the 
half-civilized condition and habits for which Moses had 
provided, in his laws for the protection of the female slaves 
whom a man might take at the same time for his wives : 
but now Isaiah says that these women, whose luxury and 
pride he has just described, will abandon even the natural 
reserve of their sex, and not only force themselves several 
upon one man, but declare that they will be content to share 
with each other a legalized concubinage in which they will 



5 6 ISAIAH IV. 2—6. THE BRANCH OF JEHOVAH 



not claim the concubine's ancient right of bread and ap- 
parel, which the old law* had, in express terms, secured to 
her, if only they may bear his name.t It need not be 
supposed that Isaiah anticipated the literal fulfilment of his 
words ; we shall probably understand him better by taking 
this as an instance of that poetic or rhetorical hyperbole, 
which he so delights to use for the more forcible expression 
of his moral and political teaching. The mystery which 
some commentators have seen in the numbers ' seven ' and 
' one ' in this passage, and which is even said to have occa- 
sioned the separation of this portion of the prophecy into 
a distinct chapter, perhaps makes worth while the obvious 
remark that it is nothing more than the wide-spread idiom 
of modern as well as ancient languages, by which a definite 
or round number is put for an indefinite. Seven is thus 
generally used by the Hebrews for any considerable number, 
as it was among the Egyptians and Persians, and is still 
said to be in the East. The Moguls are said to employ 
nine in like manner. So in English we put five, or ten, 
for any small, and a hundred for a large, number, in con- 
versation ; though the genius of our language forbids such 
idioms in graver discourse. 

In that day, out of this utter desolation shall arise the 
glory and beauty of those last days with the description 
of which the prophet began his discourse. It is possible 
(as some commentators suppose) that the words 1 branch 
of Jehovah ' and £ fruit of the earth ' are only variations 
of the image to express the same thought of the restored 
nation. But it is more probable that there is a parallelism 
of contrast, and that the branch of Jehovah is the deliverer 
and ruler of the nation, while the latter only is intended 
by the fruit of the earth. This is certainly the meaning 
of this image of ' the branch ' in Isaiah's subsequent 
words — ' There shall come forth a Eod out of the stem of 
Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots,' &c. ; — in 
Jeremiah's — Behold the days come, saith Jehovah, that I 

* Exod. xxi. 10. 

f Grotius quotes Lucan (Pharsal. ii. 342) : — 

' ... da tantum nomen inane 
Connubii ; liceat tumulo scripsisse Catonis 
Marcia.' 



THE RESTORED NATION. 57 

will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a king shall 
reign and prosper, and shall execute justice and judg- 
ment,' &c. ; — and in Zechariah's — ' Behold the man whose 
name is the Branch : and he shall grow up out of his place, 
and he shall build the temple of Jehovah, and he shall 
bear the glory,' &c* 

But we have a fuller, more philosophical light, to aid 
this verbal criticism. We find traces in all the earlier 
records of the Hebrew faith and history of the expectation 
of an incarnate representative of the invisible Loed God of 
Israel ; we see how it gradually becomes to Isaiah (as I 
hope the following pages will help to show at large), and 
to his contemporaries and successors, the master-thought 
and light of their faith and teaching, to which they hold 
fast, though their individual anticipations of the manner 
of its fulfilment are again and again baffled, when the 
event shows that a Hezekiah, or Zerubbabel, or son of 
Josedech, is not the Branch ; and, lastly, we know when 
and how this expectation of Israel for themselves and man- 
kind has been at last fulfilled. And thus (if I may use the 
correct, though perhaps pedantic, phrase), we can explain 
the particular fact by the universal law, aud recognize in 
the words before us an early dawning, in or to the mind 
of Isaiah himself, of the great idea of all prophecy. 

Then follows the description of the restored and the re- 
formed, though humbled and diminished, nation, where the 
allusion, in the words ' every one that is written among 
the living,' to the public registry which was kept not only 
of the numbers but of the genealogies of the citizens,! in- 
dicates the political feeling of the prophet — his sense that 
it was the nation, and not merely a number of pious indi- 
viduals, that should be restored. It is a common obser- 
vation, verified alike in great national calamities and in 
ordinary pauperism, that misery of itself tends to make 
men not better but more vicious ; and accordingly it is 
not a mere judgment and execution on the bloody men 
and sensual women of Jerusalem that Isaiah foretells, but 

* Chap. xi. 1 ; Jerem. xxiii. 5 ; Zech. vi. 12. 

f Compare Exod. xxx. 12 ; Exod. xxxiii. 32 ; Numbers i. 2, 18 ; 1 Chron. v. 
17 ; Psalm lxix. 28 ; Jerem. xxii. 30 ; Ezek. xiii. 9. 



58 



THE PRESENCE OF JEHOVAH. 



a moral purification of the nation, wrought by Jehovah, 
and by his spirit, through these means. Their sin had 
alike infected their family and their political life ; but now 
a new and holy spirit shall be revived in every household, 
and in the ' assemblies ' of the citizens whether meeting 
at the temple worship or the preaching of a prophet,* at 
the ecclesiastical feasts or national fairs, at the tribunals 
of the king or the judges sitting in the gate, or on other 
occasions when they seem to have had a real (though 
according to modern European notions, irregular) voice in 
the legislation and government. God himself will bring 
about this restoration, showing himself to be the present 
Lord of the nation, as he was when he led their fathers, — 
the * tribes of Israel ' and the ' congregation of Jehovah,' 
— by the pillar of cloud and of fire ; and he will protect 
and defend 'the glory,'*)* — this glorious restoration of 
his Name which he has effected — as a tent shelters the 
traveller, or the booth of branches the vine-dresser, from 
the sun or the storm, or as the same pillar of cloud or fire 
defended the hosts of Israel from the pursuing enemy or 
the burning noonday heat. 

* They seem to have preached regularly on Sabbaths and New-moons : — 
2 Kings iv. 23. See above, page 36, note. 

f ' For I, saith Jehovah, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and 
will be the glory in the midst of her.' — Zechariah ii. 5. 



CHAPTER IV. 



ISAIAH V. — COMING WOES. FUSING POWER OF IMAGINATION. HEBREW IDYLL. 

ANCIENT FERTILITY OF JUD^A. — PRESENT BARRENNESS. THE VINEYARD 

OF THE LORD OF HOSTS. SELFISHNESS IN AN ARISTOCRACY. RIGHTS AND 

DUTIES OF LANDOWNERS. PROPERTY A TRUST. HEBREW AND ENGLISH 

LAWS OF ENTAIL. WORD AND WORK. OF JEHOYAH. — GOD A CONSTITU- 
TIONAL RULER. ABUSE OF WORDS BY WORLDLY MEN. THUCYDIDES. 

FULFILMENT OF ISAIAH'S THREATS TO HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND TO ALL 

AGES SINCE. — GROTIUS ON PROPHECY. 

THE contents of this discourse show it to belong to the 
same period as the two preceding ones ; but perhaps 
we may see some indications that it properly follows them, 
as being of rather a later date. The gloom of the approach- 
ing calamities is deeper, and in addition to the previous 
pictures of the effects of foreign invasion, we have now a 
description of the invaders themselves, and of their coming, 
hardly less explicit than when the prophet speaks of them 
by name to king Ahaz, in chapter vii. verse 18. 

The last prophecy began with an apologue of ' the Last 
Days ;' this opens with a like poetical picture of the former 
and the present times of Israel. Isaiah seems for a mo-» 
ment to think of Zion as in the days of her first love, 
when she still called Jehovah ' her Beloved ;' and in her 
name he begins to speak : — and then, in the rapid transi- 
tions which succeed, we have one of the instances, almost 
as frequent in Isaiah as in Shakspeare or Milton, of that 
true poet's imagination, Avhich does not merely collect and 
arrange a succession of beautiful thoughts but fuses them 
into one homogeneous whole, though they may be so 
diverse that less skilful hands could hardly bring them 
together. The Hebrew Pastoral or Idyll, as we see in the 
Canticles, chooses the imagery of the vineyard rather th an 



6o ISAIAH V. i. SONG OF THE VINEYARD. 



that of the sheepfold. The Jewish poets embody their 
ideal of a happy life in the sitting under their own vine 
and under their own fig-tree ; and this ' Song of the 
Beloved and his vineyard,' gives a lively picture of what a 
vineyard was.'"" ' Apertos Bacchus amat colles ;' and this 
vineyard is on the side of a hill, of which the Hebrew 
expresses the fertility by calling it ' a horn the son of 
oil or fatness.' Oil may here be used metaphorically for 
fertility, or the vineyards of Palestine may have been 
planted with olive trees, which would at once support the 
vines and supply a fruit of their own ; and if there were 
any other trace in the Hebrew books of the belief that 
the olive increased the fruitfulness of the vine when they 
grew together, we might suppose an allusion to it here. 
Lowth and other commentators illustrate the word ' horn ' 
by instances of the same and like metaphors in other lan- 
guages. We call a promontory a cape or head, and the 
Turks a nose ; a ridge in Latin is dorsum ; Brundusium, 
which, according to Strabo, signifies a stag's head in the 
ancient language of the country, is described by Lucan as 
stretching out a tongue and horns into the Adriatic. 
Solinus says that the south of Italy divides into two 
horns, and Camden that ' Cornwall is called by the in- 
habitants, in the British tongue, Kernaw, as lessening by 
degrees like a horn, running out into promontories like so 
many horns.' So Statius has Cornu Parnassi, and the 
Swiss have such names as Buchhorn, Schreckhorn, for 
mountains. And so Demetrius told Philip, that ' the hill 
Ithome (with its citadel of Messene) and the Acrocorinthus, 
were the two horns of the Peloponnesus, which he who held 
was master of the bull.'t Lowth farther observes, with his 
wonted taste, that ' Whoever has considered the descrip- 
tions given of Mount Tabor, and the views of it which are 
to be seen in books of travels ; its regular conic form 
rising singly in a plain to a great height from a base 
small in proportion ; its beauty and fertility to the very 

* ' Schulz states that he supped under a vine whose stem was ahout a foot 
and a half in diameter, its height about thirty feet, while its branches and 
branchlets, which had to be supported, formed a tent of upwards of thirty 
feet square.' — Kitto's Bibl. Cyclop., art. Vine. 

f Polyb. vii. 11, quoted in Grote's History of Greece, x. 309. 



ANCIENT FERTILITY OF JUDAEA. 61 



top, will have a good idea of a horn the son of oil." ' 
The land of Israel was once a fertile as well as a moun- 
tainous country : Moses calls it ' the mountain of thine 
(God's) inheritance '* and ' that goodly mountain ;'f and 
afterwards describes it as ' a good land, a land of brooks of 
water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys 
and hills ; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig 
trees, and pomegranates ; a land of oil olive, and honey ; a 
land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou 
shalt not lack any thing in it ; a land whose stones are iron, 
and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass : . . . a land 
which Jehovah thy God careth for : the eyes of Jehovah 
thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the 
year even unto the end of the year.'* The eyes of 
Jehovah have ceased to be upon it ; the curse has been as 
truly fulfilled as once the blessing ; and the traveller now 
finds the mountains returned to their natural barrenness, 
though still bearing traces of long-abandoned cultivation. 
The way in which the change has been effected is thus 
lucidly explained by Dr. Kitto : — ' Juclsea, the southern 
part of Palestine, is a country full of hills and valleys, 
conformably to the Scriptural intimations. The hills are 
generally separated from one another by valleys and tor- 
rents, and are for the most part of moderate height, 
uneven, and seldom of any regular figure. The rock of 
which they are composed is easily converted into soil ; 
which, being arrested by terraces when washed down 
by the rains, renders the hills cultivable in a series of 
long narrow gardens formed by these terraces from the 
base upwards. Thus, the hills were cultivated in former 
times most abundantly ; and were enriched and beautified 
with the olive, the fig-tree, and the vine ; and thus the 
limited cultivation which now subsists is still carried on. 
But when the inhabitants were rooted out and cultivation 
abandoned the terraces fell to decay, and the soil which 
had collected on them was washed down into the valleys, 
leaving only the arid rock, naked and desolate. This is 
the general character : but in some parts the hills are 
beautifully wooded ; and in others, the application of the 

* Exod. xv. 17. t Deut. iii. 25. % Deut. viii. 7—9, xi. 12. 



62 



ISAIAH V. 2 — 7. THE VINEYARD 



ancient mode of cultivation — under which the valleys are 
covered with corn while the terraced hills are clothed with 
fig-trees, olive-trees, or vines — suggests to the traveller 
how rich this country once was and still might be, and 
how beautiful was the aspect which it offered. All these 
characteristics of desolation apply with peculiar force to 
that portion of Judaea which formed the inheritance of 
Benjamin. Its most favourably situated mountains are 
wholly uncultivated ; and perhaps in no other country is 
such a mass of rock exhibited without an atom of soil.'* 

I believe that in a poetical allegory there is always more 
or less of allusion to the details of that which is alle- 
gorised ; but it is only allusion, — to be realized by the 
imagination, rather than by the understanding, of the 
reader, as well as of the poet. The several images are 
j3arts of a picture, which must be contemplated as a pic- 
ture, and its meaning is to enter into the mind through 
the imagination. Still, a matter-of-fact commentator, like 
Yitringa, deeply imbued with the spirit of his author, will 
sometimes greatly help his reader's imagination by his 
minute analysis : and I think this is the case in his expla- 
nation of the details of this description of the vineyard. 
— A vineyard consists of vines planted for the sake of 
their fruit : the Hebrew nation with its tribes, its families, 
and its persons, was such a vineyard, appointed to bring 
forth the fruits of personal and social religion and virtue, 
— holiness, righteousness, and love to God and man : this 
nation was established in a land flowing with milk and 
honey, endowed with all natural advantages, all circum- 
stances which could favour inward life by outward pros- 
perity ; and the grace and favour of Jehovah, and the 
influences of his spirit, always symbolized by oil, were 
continually causing it to be fruitful : ' And he fenced it,'"f* 
— the arm of the Lokd of hosts, employing kings and 
heroes, was its defence against all enemies : its institutions 

* Physical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 32, 33. 

t I leave Vitringa's rendering of pT3? which is also that of the LXX. the 
Vulgate, our Authorized Version, and of Jarchi, Kimchi, and Kosenmiiller, 
and which suits verse 5: hut if the usual modern reading — 'digged' — is 
to be preferred we might interpret it to mean that the long-hardened soil was 
broken up by the mattock and the spade of Joshua and his armies. 



OF THE LORD OF HOSTS. 



63 



were fitted to preserve internal order, and to prevent the 
admixture of evil from without, with the chosen and 
separated nation ; and its territory was marked out and 
protected by natural boundaries in a noticeable manner : 
' And gathered out the stones/ — the heathen nations, and 
the stocks and stones they worshipped : ' And planted it 
with the choicest vine,'' — a nation of the noble stock of 
the patriarchs, and chosen and cultivated by the Lord of 
the vineyard, with especial care, for his own use : • And 
built a tower in it,' — namely, Jerusalem — for the protec- 
tion and superintendence of the vineyard, as well as to be 
its farmhouse, so to speak : ' And also made a wine-press 
therein,' — where the wine-press seems to point to the same 
idea as the sending the servants to receive the fruit in our 
Lord's modification of this parable : lawgivers, kings, and 
judges, the temple with its priesthood and ordinances, and 
the schools of the prophets, were the appointed means for 
pressing out and receiving the wine — the spiritual virtues 
and graces of the vineyard.* And the end is, that 'He 
looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought 
forth wild grapes.' 

The master of the vineyard appeals to the inhabitant of 
Jerusalem, as to an impartial stranger, to judge what 
more could have been done for the vineyard ; and to 
approve his decision as to what shall be done, when the 
stock of the choicest vine*|* has turned out to produce 
nothing but wild, or crab, grapes, after all the culture 
bestowed on it : it is worthy of nothing but to be laid 
waste, and this is what he will do to it. And then, by a 
transition which brings the whole image into union with 

* Grotius, following Jerome, explains the wine-press by the altar with its 
blood of sacrifices. 

f ' Yet I had planted thee a noble vine (here, as in our text, 
a peculiarly choice kind), wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned 
into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?' Jeremiah ii. 21. 
Lysias, in the place quoted above (page 2), attributes the ' noble and wonder- 
ful deeds ' of the Athenians to their noble stock as well as to their political 
wisdom: — Koi yap rot teat tyvvrtg icaXwg Kai yvovrtq ofioia, k.t.X. He just 
before explains this noble birth to be their autochthon y, which had enabled 
their political existence to be a just one from the very first, instead of being 
iounded, in the ordinary way, on the violent expulsion of a previous race. 
The same idea is recognized by the Hebrews in their habitual claim to their 
land as the land of their father Ahraham. How far this was, or was not, the 
ground of their rights. I shall notice hereafter. 



64 ISAIAH V. 8 — 10. THE SELFISH LANDOWNER. 



that which it represents, after the utterance of what an 
earthly master of a vineyard might do, follows, ' I will 
also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it 
— which reminds us that it is the Lord of hosts who is 
speaking, and that his vineyard is the House of Israel. 
The men of Judah, who were the plants of his choice and 
delight, have brought him the fruits of their mere sinful 
nature, instead of those of his election and grace : ' He 
looked for judgment, but behold oppression ; for righteous- 
ness, but behold a cry : ' and the inhabitant of Jerusalem, 
who had been appealed to, as an impartial judge between 
the vineyard and its master, hears the still voice of his 
own reason and conscience pronouncing to him, as it did 
to the pharisee who listened to the same parable eight 
hundred years afterwards, ' Thou art the man.' 

Selfishness, or the making self the centre to which all 
things are to tend, is the great sin in all ages and peoples. 
As soon as national institutions have awakened the sense 
of personality and the feeling of self-respect, the desire of 
accumulating wealth grows with them. And in no form is 
it more liable to abuse than in connection with the posses- 
sion of land. Men desire, by an almost universal instinct, 
to possess property in land, with its healthy occupations 
and interests, so varied and multiplied by the living 
powers of nature, and with its important political and 
social rights which grow up with the duties which are 
specially connected with it ; for this kind of property 
demands the fulfilment of more, and more obvious duties 
than any other, while it confers corresponding rights and 
powers by bringing a man into more complete personal 
relationship with his neighbours than is possible in the 
crowd of cities and the whirl of city trades. Yet, since 
the land cannot be increased in quantity, its possession by 
one man is the exclusion of another, and the Hebrew laws 
endeavoured to meet this difficulty by special provisions, 
the breach or evasion of which the prophet now denounces 
in his first ' woe' on the selfish landowner. He who 
can join house to house, and lay field to field, when he 
knows, and long has known, face to face, the very man, 
wife, and child whom he has dispossessed, and can drive 



HEBREW LAND LA WS. 



65 



out by his own simple act his fellow-men to be desolate in 
their poverty, in order that he may be alone in his riches, 
may expect a punishment proportioned to his crime. 
Such men were the nobles of Juclah and Israel throughout 
the land ; and the prophet heard, ringing in his ears, the 
declaration of Jehovah, the King of the land, that the 
great and fair palaces should become as desolate as the 
peasants' and yeomen's cottages which had made place for 
them : — the vineyard of ten acres shall yield but eight 
gallons of wine, and the corn-field shall give back but a 
tenth part of the seed sown in it. 

The Hebrew constitution, true to its patriarchal origin, 
j3rovided largely for that element of national life which the 
Jews marked by the name of ' tribe,' and which we usually 
call ' feudal,' or ' aristocratic,' but which is properly the 
element of family life as distinguished from the several 
other elements — industrious, intellectual, moral, religious 
— which have all their appropriate political forms of 
embodiment, and which together unite in one constitution, 
or body-politic. The feudal institutions in the middle 
ages were not merely arrangments for providing the kings 
with soldiers, but a complex organization of patriarchal 
government, in which, if the tenure of the landowner's 
occasional military service to the king was more palpable, 
it was not more real, nor more important an element of 
national life and progress than the daily performance of his 
and his wife's and children's personal and social duties to 
their vassals. And there was an analogous combination of 
military service and civil duty to the state in the tribal 
institutions of the Hebrews. This aristocracy of the 
Hebrew tribes, too, was directly connected with the land, 
which they held by inalienable hereditary tenure of the 
invisible King who declared the land to be his.* Political 
philosophy has much to say in favour of laws and institu- 
tions, at certain periods of a nation's growth, for encouraging, 
or at least permitting, the disposition of its members to 
found families, to be maintained by hereditary possessions 
in land. Yet, if this disposition be not kept within bounds, 
those who are influenced by it will 'join house to house, 

* Levit. xxv. 23. 



66 



ENGLISH LA W OF ENTAIL. 



and field to field, till there be no place ;' till the race of 
small landholders, yeomen, and partly independent tenants, 
is swallowed np by a few rich despots. To prevent this 
evil among the Hebrews, Moses directed as equal a division 
of the land as possible in the first instance, among the 
600,000 families who originally formed the nation; and 
provided against the permanent alienation of any estate, by 
giving a right of repurchase to the seller and his relations, 
and of repossession without purchase at the Jubilee.* The 
story of Nabothf illustrates the effect of these laws in forming 
an order of sturdy independent yeomen ; but it must also 
be taken as an instance of the habitual breach of the same 
laws by the rich and powerful, J as they in like manner dis- 
obeyed that respecting the liberation of slaves at the 
Jubilee. § In England, where the Norman conquest accu- 
mulated all the land in the hands of a few nobles, the like 
accumulation has been opposed— however imperfectly — by 
laws in their form exactly opposite to those of Moses ;■ — 
by the permission to cut off old entails, and the prohibition 
to make new ones except for one generation, and by allow- 
ing land to be bought and sold like other commodities. 
The Hebrew constitution provided by law for the preserva- 
tion of the old families, while our constitution at the same 
time that it gives them the means of sustaining themselves 
with even the most ordinary internal virtue and energy, 
permits them, if they become effete and worthless, to give 
way to neAV and more vigorous houses, which have raised 
themselves out of the ranks below ; and thus new blood 
is continually infused into the old organization of the 
state. 

The course of social changes is for the most part noise- 
less in England ; but those who look into the reasons why 
estates pass from old to new owners can see that those 
reasons are mainly moral ones : — that when a man has to 
sell the home of his fathers it is almost always because he 
or they had ceased to understand and to acknowledge 
that they held it on the tenure of social duties. All 

* Numb. xxvi. Josh, xiii— xix. Levit. xxv. 8 — 11, 23 — 28. 
f 1 Kings xxi. 1 — 24. 

% Compare Micah ii. 2; Nehem. v. 1 — 13 ; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21. 
§ Jer. xxxiv. 8 — 16. 



GROWTH OF OPINION AND LAW. 



67 



property whatever is doubtless a trust ; but the principle 
always has been, and always must be, more clearly 
illustrated in landed than in any other property ; and this 
not less by the efforts of selfish men to deny than of good 
men to assert it. I do not indeed say nor think that our 
existing laws are as effectual as they might be for securing 
the change from bad to good landowners : they require 
too little, and they permit too much. Yet if we review 
the growth of opinion and of law in the matter, we see 
that in as far as the feudal spirit was true to itself it 
taught the English lord to hold that it was the mark, not 
of the Christian gentleman but of the usurer and the 
alien, to have a merely selfish right in property which he 
could call his own : and when the gentleman borrowed 
the usurer's money, and then pleaded his family's inalien- 
able right to its land in bar of repayment, we were happily 
drawing towards a stage of our history in which the law 
was strong enough to assert its majesty against even the 
statute-makers of the time being, and to teach them that 
they had duties to usurers and aliens, as well as to their 
own families and vassals* Then the judge upon the 
bench showed himself more than a match in the cause of 
justice for the baron in parliament : and now, when our 
ways of effecting our ends have become very different, 
though the ends themselves — of social duty or of selfish- 
ness — are still the same, the latest developments of the 
science of political economy are still preparing for new 
results in the forms suited to this age. For they are 
proving that while an old and civilized state like ours has 
a deep interest — perhaps that of its very existence — in 
the maintenance of each individual's legal property in his 

* I refer, of course, to the. subtle legal construction by which the judges, 
in Edward IV.' s reign, gave the first deadly blow to the statute Be Bonis, 13 
Edw. I. c. 1. The barons thought by that law effectually to prevent any 
future alienation of their estates from their respective families. But after 
throwing out hints in the long interval as to what could be done, the judges 
under Edward IV. decided that an 'estate-tail' could be effectually con- 
verted into a 4 fee-simple,' by the fiction of 4 common recovery.' The king 
may have sanctioned or connived at this decision, with a view to break the 
power of traitor-barons the easier; but when we remember the growing 
spirit of independence in'the educated class, and the increased importance of 
trade, there seems little doubt that the judges were conscious of the higher 
motive of compelling even nobles to pay their debts and leave off trampling 
on the middle classes. 

F 2 



68 RIGHTS THE CREATION OF LAW. 



estate, it has an equally deep interest in his using his 
property in the way most beneficial to the community ; 
and a public and indefeasible right, limited only by con- 
siderations of practical expediency, to enforce that use by 
any necessary means.* And he who trusts that in our 
national progress we shall never cease to add new things 
to the old, and yet not destroy anything old while its life 
and uses still remain, will not doubt that opinion and 
sentiment, law and custom, will still continue to meet 
these questions of the tenure of land wisely and justly, 
and in the interest of the whole nation. It may be 
thought strange to doubt the existence of a 'natural 
right' of property ; but I believe that, if we look quietly 
to the bottom of the matter, we shall see that the ordinary 
assertion of such a right is partly a misapplication of 
abstract reason to a subject which lies altogether within 
the region of positive institutions, historical experience, 
and the calculations of expediency ; and partly a selfish 
animal instinct, which reveals its true nature by its rage 
and fear at any alarm of losing its material possessions, 
and by the resolution which it then shows to defend these 
by all that physical force of police and soldiers, for the 
organization of which alone society seems to it to exist. 
' Right, in its most proper sense, is the creature of law 
and statute, and only in the technical language of the 
courts has it any substantial and independent sense. In 
morals, right is a word without meaning, except as the 
correlative of duty.'t 

The rich men whom Isaiah sees around him grasp wealth 
that they may expend it in luxury ; and at last in the 

* See especially the chapters on landed property in Mr. J. Stuart Mill's 
Principles of Political Economy. Mr. Chichester Fortescue, in his Irish 
Land Act, has recognized and embodied, with true political genius, these re- 
lations of the individual landowner and the community — as to which another 
Irish statesman, Mr. Drummond, had previously asserted that property has 
its duties as well as its rights. 

t Coleridge's Lay Sermons, p. 66, edit. 1852. — I have purposely adopted, as 
to the 'natural right' of property, Coleridge's argument, and almost his 
words, as to Jacobinism, which all agree is the assertion of man's 4 natural 
right' to power. It is instructive to be reminded how ultra-conservatism 
and ultra-liberalism agree in appealing to ' natural rights ' instead of to the 
positive laws of an historical constitution, — to the petty individual reason, 
instead of to the universal reason, which, because it is universal, can only 
manifest itself in successive historical developments. 



ISAIAH V. ii— 17. THE SENSUAL REVELLERS. 69 



most sensual forms of luxury, — drinking and revelling. 
As in another age, the old Roman, who touched nothing, 
least of all ardent drinks, till the ninth hour of the day,* 
was succeeded by the race who could boast with Horace, — 

' Est qui nec veteris pocula Massici, 
Nec partem solido demere de die 
Spernit ; ' 

so the land of Israel has fallen from the blest state in 
which its princes " ate not in the morning, but in due 
season, for strength and not for drunkenness ;f and we see 
men ' That put far away the evil day, and cause the seat 
of violence to come near : that lie upon beds of ivory, and 
stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs 
out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the 
stall : that chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to 
themselves instruments of music, like David : that drink 
wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the choicest oint- 
ments : but are not grieved with the affliction of Joseph.' % 
And thus embruted, they have lost all sense of there being 
any divine order and government of the world, for have 
they not even obliterated the natural distinctions of healthy 
appetite, and of night and day ? They cannot retain any 
glimmering of that which God had revealed to their nation 
above all other nations, and was still telling them by the 
mouth of his prophets, — that the whole world, social no 
less than natural, the heavens as well as the earth, had 
been created according to the designs conceived in the 
eternal mind of God himself, of which mind the declaration 
and explanation is called by the Hebrews his £ Word,' the 
actual realization of the design his ' Work,' and the various 
processes by which he is effecting that realization the 
' Operation of his hands,' while the ultimate end of the 
whole is named the 1 Glory of God.' § 

They have no knowledge either of the Word or the 
Work of Jehovah : they lack that which alone could save 

* 'They always ate but once a day, and that was in the evening.' — De- 
scription of the G-olden Age in King Alfred's Boethius, S. Turner's Mist, of 
England, ii. 36. 

f Eccles. x. 17. 

% Amos vi. 3 — 6, where the prophet is speaking of the same Jewish nobles. 
§ Compare Psalms xxxiii. 4, xcii. 4, 5, cxi. 2 — 8, Ixiv. 9, 10, xxviii. 5 
lxxvii. 12—14. 



7° 



NATIONAL JUDGMENTS. 



them, which alone has upheld any nation, in any age or 
clime. Their feasting and drunkenness are about to be 
succeeded by thirst and famine ; by an indefinite, hopeless, 
desolation of the whole land, dark and deep as death and 
the grave ; so that hell, with its insatiable maw, shall be 
the only banqueter, and its food the hopes and life as well 
as the bodies of men. 

The nation has forgotten God — J ehovah living and reign- 
ing among them ; they are sunk into selfish, carnal ease, 
trusting in their riches and glory, and in the apparent 
stability of their civil and ecclesiastical institutions. There- 
fore Jehovah summons this carnal glory, and the men who 
trust in it, to judgment, to try what there is in it, whether 
it has anything by which it can stand without his help ; 
and then they will see by the judgment and its execution 
(which will be according to truth and righteousness), that 
all their glorious endowments were given them by God as 
witnesses of himself, and means whereby to attain to the 
knowledge of him, but that apart from him they have no 
worth. This judgment began to come upon the men 
whom Isaiah addressed, in the reign of Ahaz, soon after 
the delivery of the warning ; but in order fully to under- 
stand it, we must (as in the case of all other prophecies) 
look at it in the light of the whole subsequent history of 
the Jews, and of Christendom. In the final destruction 
of Jerusalem by the Romans, Christ and his Apostles saw 
the selfish and carnal nation brought to its last trial and 
righteously condemned, and the sentence carried into exe- 
cution by that Man whom God had appointed to judge the 
world. They declared, and the event, spread over succes- 
sive centuries, has proved the truth of the declaration, that 
God was bringing down the mean man and the mighty 
man alike throughout the world, and exalting himself and 
his Son, setting his Name up in the world, and causing 
it to triumph over all opposition. Modern history and 
science have become so vast and complicated, alike as to 
the facts and the laws which govern those facts, that we 
cannot realize the belief in the judgments of God upon 
nations in the simple way in which the old prophets, or 
even our own forefathers, did. Yet we may find that the 



GOD A CONSTITUTIONAL RULER. 71 

old faith is capable of reconciliation with our new know- 
ledge and our doubts arising out of the discovery how 
incomplete that knowledge is, if we can rise to the appre- 
hension of God as a^ constitutional and not a despotic 
king, who not merely puts forth his power from time to 
time, to prevent or punish flagrant crimes, but who is 
steadily governing us by fixed laws, and administering 
settled institutions. Though men may slavishly dread an 
arbitrary will, they can never feel for it that salutary fear 
which is the beginning of wisdom ; and unless we believe 
that God's judgments are righteous — that they are a part 
of the steady administration of a polity — as well as good 
in their effects, it will be impossible for us to keep long 
from superstition, or its opposite, scepticism. And, there- 
fore, we may see the germ of a true historical and political 
philosophy in the prophet's repeated assertion, that God is 
exalted in executing justice, and sanctified in righteousness. 
The ' sanctifying God ' is the recognizing and worshipping 
him as holy and separate from all other gods, and the 
renouncing and denying all others as false gods. This 
shall be the result of Jehovah's judgments : and the prophet 
contemplates the judgment and the reformation with a 
chastened contentment, while he pictures the once richly 
cultivated fields as become a pasture for lambs, and the 
lands of the selfish nobles, after being desolated by the 
invader, as now restored to a humble peace by the presence 
of the wandering shepherds, those friendly strangers, Recha- 
bites or Kenites, who still appeared from time to time in 
the plains of Palestine with their flocks, as Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob had themselves done in old times, when they 
too were strangers (the same word) in the land of the 
Canaanites. Lowth and Ewald follow LXX. in reading 
D"TH ' kids,' for D^12 ' strangers ; ' but there seems no need 
to emend the Hebrew text for the sake of a mere verbal 
parallelism. Nor is it necessary to decide whether we are 
to give a literal or an allegorical meaning to this verse, for 
the one image into which the two are fused is the only 
adequate counterpart to the event : the lands wasted by 
the inroads and invasions which followed the delivery of 
this prophecy were no doubt pastured by flocks that were 



ISAIAH V. 18—23. THE WORLDLY MEN. 



owned by others than the former landlords ; and the rule 
of Uzziah, J otham, Ahaz, and their rich and selfish nobles, 
was succeeded by that of the lamblike Hezekiah.* 

The sensual reveller simply disregards God's constitution 
and government of society ; but the shrewd man of the 
world and the intellectual sceptic sneeringly deny its 
reality. ' Wise in their own eyes and prudent in their 
own sight,' do they not see clearly that selfishness is at 
bottom the one real motive-power of society ? Priests 
or prophets may preach about good and evil, light and 
darkness, right and wrong, as though these words repre- 
sented realities essentially contrary ; but do not they know 
that these are but words, useful instruments by which 
wise men govern fools, but to which they are themselves 
no slaves ? Shall the astute and able men who have been 
transacting public affairs, or their own business, with such 
perfect success for so long past, who have carried on the 
whole social and political mechanism during the prosperous 
reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, be threatened with this 
■ counsel and work of J ehovah ? ' Strong at once in their 
religious formalism and their pride of worldly craft they 
reply, ' Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we 
may see it ; and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel 
draw nigh and come, that we may know it ! — In the act 
and habit of thus rejecting the guidance of Jehovah, they 
have harnessed themselves to their sin as to a waggon, 
and they shall draw the load of their choice till they find 
whether it be the woe that the prophet declares it to be. 
The words in the Hebrew may imply the punishment of 
the sin as well as the sin itself; and some commentators 
explain the passage to mean that ' they draw and bind their 
punishment upon themselves by the strength of their evil 
doings.' 

Vitringa quotes the description by Thucydides, of the 
like confusion between virtues and vices, and their very 
names, as the consequence of the Greek civil wars : Kcu rrjp 
eiwOvLdv a^Lwaiv rwv ovofxaTwv ek to, epya avTrjWa^av rrj 

* See the description of Hezekiah' s reformation in 2 Chron. xxix. 3 — 10, 
And compare St. Paul's account of another fulfilment of the prophecy, 
1 Corinth, i. 25—31. 



THE UNJUST JUDGES. 



75 



2ikcliu)(tsi' ToKfxa fiev yap aXoyiaros, avhpca (fnXeraipo^ kvo- 
fiiadif fieXXyais he. 7rpo/jLi]6i]^, heiXla evirpeiry^' k. t. A.* 
And he then goes on to observe that ' there are principles 
of truth in man's heart which are the foundations of all right, 
justice, and virtue — principles not only true in themselves, 
but ' good ' and ' sweet ' in their effects : that the reve- 
lation of Jehovah, his covenant with Abraham and his 
descendants, his laws and promises of temporal and eternal 
life to all who should obey them, were especially the 
' light ' of the Jews ; and were ' good ' and ' sweet,' 
because the source of all consolations in every struggle 
with evil, and the bond by which their political society 
was held together : that the wicked were not satisfied with 
practically renouncing this light with its excellent fruits, 
but denied them by arguments, and perversion of the 
proper meaning of words : and that while this was a 
national sin in the days of Isaiah the Jews filled up the 
measure of their iniquity in the time of Christ, when they 
rejected the Light of life as darkness, and evil, and bitter, 
making the light that was in them to be darkness.' 

Lastly, among the men whom Isaiah denounces as the 
corrupters and destroyers of the society of which they are 
the leaders, are the unjust lawyers and judges : he men- 
tions as characteristic of them, that they are heroes at 
drinking, and spice their wine to make it stronger :f by 
which, perhaps, we are to understand, not that their heads 
and senses were overcome with wine like the drunkards 
spoken of above ; but that the effect on their hearts and 
consciences was such as to harden them in their criminal 
perversion of the law. Perhaps the passage might be 
illustrated by instances of the professional character of 
hard-drinking but strong-headed judges of other times. 

The ' law ' of Jehovah was given by Moses, and em- 
bodied in institutions and a code; the 'word' was that 
exposition of the meaning and life of these which the 

* 'The received value of names imposed for signification of things, was 
changed into arbitrary ; for inconsiderate boldness was counted true-hearted 
manliness ; provident deliberation, a handsome fear ; modesty, the cloak of 
cowardice ; to be wise in everything, to be lazy in everything,' &c. — Hobbes's 
Translation, iii. 82. 

t Compare Psalm lxxv. 8 ; Prov, xxiii. 30 ; Cant. viii. 2. The Romans 
called this spiced wine Aromatites. 



I 



74 ISAIAH V. 24 — 30. THE ASSYRIAN INVASION. 

prophets were from time to time declaring in the ears of 
the people. The nation had cast away this law, and de- 
spised this word. And when all heart and morality are 
thus gone from a nation, its roots below ground are 
rotten, and its nourishing appearance is ready to turn 
to dust.* There is no substance in such a people, 
nothing which can stand calamity of any kind. It 
will sweep them away as the fire licks up the stubble 
which men burn when the crop of corn or hay has been 
gathered in. 

Already, when the prophet speaks, Jehovah has smitten 
them in his anger. Whether the earthquake which hap- 
pened in the reign of Uzziahf had actually filled the 
streets of Jerusalem with dead bodies, or whether Isaiah 
only makes it the image or instance of wider-spread 
national calamities, we cannot pronounce historically ; but 
in either case, the past and present is but a foretaste of 
heavier woes impending : Jehovah has made the hills 
of their national prosperity to tremble, and personal 
suffering has begun : but ' for all this his anger is not 
turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.' He is 
about to bring foreign armies as the instruments of his 
judgment : the vision of the worst of human calamities — 
the invasion of a rich, civilized, luxurious nation by over- 
whelming hordes of barbarians — rises before the prophet : 
he speaks of them as present, and his words have a terrible 
force to him who reads them now, while he thinks of their 
fearful import then. Jehovah has set up a standard to 
which he is gathering the nations under the Assyrian rule, 
and the prophet sees them steadily though swiftly coming 
on in warlike array — bowmen, horses, and chariots : they 
rush to battle with the roar of lions, they seize and hold 
down their prisoners and their booty with the growl which 
marks the lion's refusal to give up his prey ; they come on 
like the sea in its rage ; and when the helpless inhabitant 
of Judah turns from this rising tide to the land — his own 

* Possibly alluding to the so-called Apples of Sodom, which the traveller 
still gathers on the shore of the Dead Sea. See article 'Vine of Sodom' in 
Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. 

f Amos i. 1 ; Zech. xiv. 0. 



GROTIUS ON PROPHECY. 



75 



land — he sees only the darkness of woe ; and when he 
turns again from the earth to look upward he sees only 
the thick clouds gathering over the heavens above him. 
I have endeavoured, in my Version, to represent the 
distinction of the tenses in the original, so as to preserve 
the form of a picture or vision which presents itself to the 
prophet, and is by him put before his hearers. The inde- 
terminate singular of the verbs and pronouns in the 
Hebrew is best rendered by the English 'they' and 'one' 
in the Authorized Version. 

The men and women who heard Isaiah speak these 
words in the court of the temple, in the highway of the 
Fuller's Field, or in some other crowded thoroughfare ; 
who lived to see fathers and husbands, and sons and 
brothers, killed in the several invasions which soon fol- 
lowed, or mothers, wives, and daughters driven like herds 
of cattle to a sale and slavery worse than death ; and 
whose wealth and sources of wealth were utterly wasted by 
these and like inroads into their populous and highly 
cultivated country ; could not have thought the .prophet's 
language too strong for the events, though it seems so to 
many commentators of the last, or even the present century. 
Yet we must not forget that in an unimaginative and un- 
philosophic age, more of the idea of prophecy has been pre- 
served by several such commentators seeking its fulfilment 
in several distant events, than could have been the case if 
they had agreed to restrict it to the mere contemporaneous 
history, as Grotius and others have too dryly done.* And 
this is such a picture of ' the life of things,' that it is equally 
the description of the same judgment of God, in whatever 
age or to whatever nation occurring. In successive ages it ' 

* Nothing, indeed, can be sounder than the principle which Grotius lays 
down on the subject. He says : — 'In the prophecies, I have made it a main 
object to refer the particulars to the corresponding historical events : the 
reader will judge with what success. In this way certain passages which 
the old commentators refer to Christ and the times of the Gospel, \ I have 
referred to events nearer the prophet's own times, yet as involving a type 
of those other Gospel times. I have done this because I saw it to be the 
only way of preserving that coherence of words and things which in the 
rest of the prophetical books is so admirable : and, indeed, these passages do 
reveal to us Christians the counsel of God, who has shadowed forth to us 
the Messiah, and the benefits given us through him, not by words only, but 
also by events.' — Frcefat. ad Annotat. ad Vet. Testamentum. 



76 PROPHECY PERPETUALLY FULFILLED. 



told the Jew of the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Greek, and 
the Roman ; to the subject of the Roman empire it spoke 
no less clearly of the Goth and the Vandal ; the British 
monk must have recalled it in the days when Gildas 
recorded the invasion of the Saxon ; the degenerate Saxon 
learnt its truth from the Dane and the Norman ; and the 
Spaniard from the Mahometan ; the Byzantine from Timour 
' the incarnate wrath of God ; ' the Continental nations 
from the revolutionary armies and Napoleon ; and, in our 
own day, the people of France from the Germans. There 
is no land or nation where this terrible prophecy has not 
been fulfilled ; may God grant that we Englishmen may' 
not need to be roused from our too thoughtless and 
selfish indifference, and to find that these words, read, but 
scarcely listened to in our churches, have an awful practical 
meaning to us ! , 



CHAPTER Y. 



ISAIAH VI. — THE PROPHET'S COMMISSION. — THE TEMPLE. — ITS SCENES. — THE 
VISION. — INSIGHT INTO THE LIFE OF THINGS. — PROPHECY RATIONAL AND 

INTELLIGIBLE. — GOD THE REAL AND ACTUAL KING. — HIS HOLINESS. HIS 

JUSTICE. — PATRIOTIC HOPES OF ISAIAH. 

rpHE expression ' In the year that King Uzziah died, 
J- then I saw,' implies that Isaiah wrote this account of 
his vision some time after it occurred ; and both this and 
the like phrase in chapter xiv. 28 suggest the thought 
that the prophet himself revised and arranged the book of 
his prophecies. Whether these expressions refer to dates 
before or after the death of the kings mentioned in them, 
has been much disputed : in chapter xiv. the context will 
allow of either interpretation, nor in that of the passage 
before us can we assert that either is incongruous. Yet it 
seems reasonable to think with Gesenius, that if the mean- 
ing were after, the phrase — which is, literally, ' In the 
death-year of King Uzziah' — would rather have been ' In 
the first year of J otham (or Hezekiah) ; ' and if we suppose 
with him and other commentators, among whom Jarchi 
rests on the authority of the Gemara, that the chapter 
before us is the record of Isaiah's original calling and 
consecration to the prophetic office, then it must be re- 
ferred to Uzziah' s lifetime, as the only prophecy which can 
correspond with the words of the title of the whole Book — 
' which he saw in the days of Uzziah.'* There is cer- 
tainly a great resemblance to the parallel accounts of the 
calling of Jeremiah and Ezekiel at the beginning of their 
prophecies,! but on the other hand no such formal call is 
recorded of the other prophets, so that it cannot be looked 
for as essential to their office. And therefore there is no 
conclusive evidence from these cases, either for or against 

* Ch. i. 1. t Jer. i. ; Ezek. i. ii. 



78 EWALD ON THE PROPHETS' CALL. 



the supposition that Isaiah ma}^ have begun to preach 
before this vision gave the formal ratification of his 
appointment to the office for which the whole style of this 
as of his other writings shows him to have been long edu- 
cating ; nor would it be any disparagement of the authority 
of that ratification to consider that it recognized views of 
God's character and of the state and prospects of the 
Jewish nation which had already become familiar to the 
inspired seer, while it confirmed and sanctioned them in a 
solemn and formal decree. Yet, perhaps, the actual manner 
and words of the commission which Isaiah now receives, 
rather indicate that it was the root and source of those 
prophecies which stand before it in the book, and in which 
there is an expansion, in various forms, of its fundamental 
ideas, than that it was a condensed summary of truths 
already fully developed in his mind and in these dis- 
courses. ' Once for all,' says Ewald, ' must he who was 
to be a prophet, have become absolutely certain of the true 
relation of the world and Jehovah, — must have beheld, 
as in a distinct form, the sublime and holy character 
of Jehovah, and felt that he was directed by him alone : 
once for all must he have recognized the divine power of 
truth against the whole world, and himself as living 
and moving in it alone : once for all must he have 
entered, with the effectual energy and act of his 
whole inner being, into the counsels of God, and found 
himself for ever bound by them, and endowed by 
these bonds with true power and freedom : — this was the 
first condition, and the true beginning of all the work of 
the prophet, the holy consecration and the inner call, 
without which none became a true prophet ; and only he 
who had thus first turned his eyes within, and there found 
clearness and strength of sight, could afterwards look clearly 
and firmly into the world without, and there do his work 
as a prophet. Therefore, on the nature and strength of 
this beginning depended the whole subsequent life and 
work of a prophet : . . . . where the true and vigorous 
beginning of the work was wanting, all subsequent 
endeavours were weak and defective, empty, and unfruit- 
ful ; while in the true prophets that beginning never 



ISAIAH'S VISION. 



79 



ceased to be operative, and the memory of it bloomed 
without fading in later years. If such a prophet under- 
took to record his more important prophecies in writing, 
he put at the head of them, and with a just consciousness 
of its significance, a description of that holy moment — often 
of a time long gone by — when he had first known Jehovah 
in his true majesty, and felt that he was called, sanctified, 
and endowed with strength by him.'* 

We shall then account, as has been already said, for the 
position of the earlier prophecies by considering that they 
give a complete picture of the state of the nation at the 
time that Isaiah received his commission and entered on 
his office, and so supply us with the preliminary informa- 
tion necessary to the adequate comprehension of these. 
For the times of Jotham were but the continuation and 
counterpart of those of Uzziah as to their selfishness, 
luxury, and worldliness, only that these were more and 
more rapidly preparing their own punishment by eating 
away the military and otherwise energetic spirit which had 
animated the people under Uzziah. 

The scene of this Vision is the Temple ; and its features 
will have been the same whether we suppose them to have 
risen before Isaiah's imagination while he was absent from 
the spot, in the solitude of his chamber or his house-top, 
or assume (as I myself prefer to do) that he was actually 
praying in the temple at the time. 

Though it is unlikely that any of the successors to what 
was but a small remnant of Solomon's kingdom perfectly 
restored the temple after it was deprived of its original 
splendour by Shishak in the reign of Rehoboam, yet we 
see the worthier princes from time to time repairing the 
structure where it had been suffered to fall into decay, and 
replacing, as far as they could, the treasures and the costly 
decorations of which it was repeatedly despoiled to buy off 
foreign invaders ; and probably there was no period in 
which the restoration would be more complete than in the 
reign of Uzziah, who in his power, wealth, and magnificence, 
came nearer than any other to Solomon. And there will 
be much more of fact than of fancy in the picture if, for 

* Ewald, Die Propheten, i. 20. 



8o 



THE TEMPLE. 



the clearer understanding of the scene of this vision, we 
figure to ourselves the youthful prophet in his rough hair 
or woollen garment (possibly not unlike that of the 
Capuchin friar as we now see him in the streets or 
churches of Rome) going up to the temple to worship ; — 
and if we look with him at the temple as, at the end of 
300 years from its building, it must have presented itself 
to his eyes, with its ample courts, and colonnades, and 
j^orch, and its holy house, and holy of holies, well-propor- 
tioned, and of the most elaborate workmanship, though 
rather massive than large according to our notions. As he 
crossed the variegated pavement of the ' great court of 
the congregation,' and stopped — for we have no reason to 
suppose him a Levite — at the entrance to the inner or 
' priests' court,' on each hand would rise one of the tall 
pillars which Solomon set up, in token that the kingdom 
was constituted by Jehovah, and would be upheld by his 
might,* and which, once of ' bright brass,' but now 
mellowed into bronze, had their square capitals richly 
wreathed with molten lilies, chain-work, and pomegranates ; 
before him, resting on the back of the twelve oxen, and 
cast like them in brass, would appear the " molten sea," 
a basin of thirty cubits in circumference and containing 
two or three thousand baths of water, its brim wrought 
' like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies,' and under 
these a double row of ornamental knobs ; while on each 
side stood five smaller lavers, the bases of which rested on 
wheels, and were most elaborately ornamented with oxen, 
lions, cherubims, and palm-trees, engraved upon them ; 
and beyond these again he would see the great brazen 
altar of burnt offering, with its never-extinguished fire ; 
and overhead the roof of thick cedar beams resting on 
rows of columns. These were the courts of the palace of 
the divine King of Israel, f for the reception of his subjects 
and his ministers. The house itself again consisted of two 

* Can there be much doubt that this was the meaning of Jachin and Boaz 
(1 Kings vii. 21 ; 2 Chron. iii. 17) ? As they were the work of a Tyrian 
architect it is interesting to compare the mention of the two pillars which 
Herodotus saw in the temple of Hercules at Tyre. — Herodotus, ii. 44. 

f Compare the description of Solomon's own house, which, besides its inner 
porch, had another, where he sat to judge the people, 1 Kings vii. 7. The 
arrangement of the Temple is plainly that of a palace. 



THE UNSEEN KING OF ISRAEL. 



81 



parts, the outer of which, the holy place, was accessible to 
those priests who were in immediate attendance on their 
unseen Sovereign, while the inner, or holiest place, was 
the very presence-chamber of the Monarch who ' dwelt 
between the cherubims,' which spread their golden wings 
over the ark containing the covenant he had vouchsafed to 
enter into with his people, and itself forming ' the mercy- 
seat,' where was ' the place of his throne and the place of 
the soles of his feet.' In the position which I have, fol- 
lowing the requirements of the narrative in the chapter 
before us, supposed Isaiah to be placed, he would see 
through the open folding-doors of cypress, carved ' with 
cherubims, and palm-trees, and open flowers,' and ' covered 
with gold upon the carved work,' into the holy place, 
which he could not enter ; and the light of the golden 
lamps on either side would show him the cedar panelling 
of the walls, carved with knobs and open flowers, with 
cherubims and palm-trees, festooned with chain-work, and 
richly gilt ; the mosaics* of precious stones ; the cypress 
floor ; the altar of incense ; the table with the shrewbread ; 
the censers, tongs, and other furniture of ' pure and perfect 
gold ; ' and before the doorway at the further end, and 
not concealed by the open leaves of the olive-wood doors 
(carved and gilded like the others), would be distinguish- 
able the folds of the vail ' of blue, and purple, and crimson, 
and fine linen,' embroidered with cherubims. In the East 
the closed vail, or purdah, declares the presence and 
secures the privacy of the monarch, into which no man 
may intrude and live ; and in the temple at Jerusalem it 
was the symbol of the awful presence and unapproachable 
majesty of the King, Jehovah, Lord of hosts. The pious 
and thoughtful Jew, taught to connect the presence of his 
God with this actual dwelling-place in the midst of his own 
chosen nation, was thereby educated to realize the unity 
and the personality of God in a way that could not then 
have been otherwise possible. And thus he was not the 
less, but the better, enabled to feel and know that ' heaven 
and the heaven of heavens could not contain' Jehovah, 

* The word 'mosaic' is said to have had its origin from the variegated 
pavement of the temple. 

G 



82 



SCENES OF THE TEMPLE. 



how much less then this house. That the fact was so, we 
see from the whole tenor of Solomon's prayer at the dedi- 
cation of the temple, when, in the midst of the pomp and 
splendour of the assembled nation, the king, raised on a 
brazen scaffold near the altar, 'kneeled down upon his 
knees before all the congregation of Israel, and spread 
forth his hands to heaven,' and in the name of his people 
renewed the national covenant with Jehovah, the God of 
Israel. Other recognitions of that covenant occur to the 
mind as it transports itself into the past : we may picture 
to ourselves the triumphal return of the J ewish army from 
the field of Berachah, when ' they returned, every man of 
Judah and Jerusalem, and Jehoshaphat in the forefront of 
them, to go again to Jerusalem with joy;' 'and they 
came to Jerusalem with psalteries, and harps, and trumpets, 
into the house of Jehovah,' to celebrate with praise and 
thanksgiving their victory over the far stronger forces of a 
general gathering of the Moabites, Ammonites, and other 
shepherd nations, whose invasions have been in all ages so 
terrible to a civilized country — a victory which even the 
neighbouring kings recognized as the work of Jehovah, 
whose covenant with Israel both king and people had so 
earnestly pleaded before the battle : or we may see before 
us another time when the temple courts were again filled 
with armed men, not the splendid retinue of a peaceful 
monarch, nor the troops of one just returned from the 
war, but veteran soldiers, loyal nobles, and patriotic Levites, 
secretly assembled from distant parts of the country, and 
resolved at all hazards to restore the constitution subverted 
by the usurping murderess Athaliah, and to maintain the 
rights of the little child of seven years old who ' stood in 
the midst of them at his pillar, as the manner was,' while 
' they put upon him the crown and gave him the testimony, 
and made him king, and Jehoiada and his sons anointed 
him, and said, God save the king,' and then renewed for 
themselves, the people, and the king, the covenant which 
had thus once more been upheld in the person of the only 
remaining, only unmurdered, son of the line of David. 
And then, recalled by our text to ' the year in which king 
Uzziah died,' we think of the scene which these same 



COLLISIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE. 83 



courts had witnessed shortly before, not of the ratification, 
but of the breach of the national covenant, when Uzziah, 
the man of his age, the representative of the worldly 
spirit, the religious formalism, and the material energy and 
prosperity of the nation, had (' because he was strong, and 
his heart was lifted up to his destruction') intruded him- 
self into the sanctuary to burn incense, and the bold 
remonstrance and resistance of the priests had been sup- 
ported and enforced by his being suddenly ' smitten of 
Jehovah ' with leprosy. Though this act of Uzziah is 
only mentioned in the Chronicles, there is nothing impro- 
bable in the narrative. It is said that leprosy is a disease 
often brought out by sudden excitement, and the intrusion 
of Uzziah and the resistance of the priests are easily con- 
ceived and understood. The burning incense was one of 
the ecclesiastical functions restricted to the high priest by 
the law,* and the separation, and in some respects co- 
ordination of the offices of the king and the high priest — ■ 
of the State and the Church — were a standing witness for 
the majesty of the present though invisible Jehovah, 
greater than both, and actually directing both according 
to one constitution and law. This independence of the 
priesthood would have presented anomalies and incon- 
veniences in the working of the state machine which we 
can believe Uzziah may have thought it well to be rid of 
by asserting his supremacy ; while not only the priests, 
but those who, priests or not, entered into the spirit of the 
constitution, might deprecate the remedy as worse than the 
evil to be cured. A great part of the history of Christen- 
dom has been the history of the like conflict of rights on 
a wider and more complicated scale, from the days when 
the first Christians refused to acknowledge the divinity of 
the Roman emperors, to our own times, and our experi- 
ments, still making, whether for the separation, or the 
more harmonious relations, of Church and State. 

Perhaps on this occasion, as certainly on many others, 
Isaiah had been joining in the public daily sacrifice and 
worship, and had afterwards brought his own free-willing 
offering — a bullock or a lamb without blemish. Such an 

* Exod. xxx. 7, 8 ; Numb. xvi. 40, xviii. 7. 
G 2 



8 4 



VISION NOT ALLEGORY. 



offering, the symbol of his dedication of himself to Je- 
hovah's service, would be the natural expression of his 
earnest desire for some token that it was at last permitted 
him to enter on the actual functions of that prophetic office 
for which he had been so long preparing ; and that this 
vision was the answer to such heartfelt prayerful desire — 
itself an inspiration from on high — we may well believe. 

The notion that it is a poetic fiction by which Isaiah 
represents, as in an allegory, the commencement of his 
career as a prophet, is plainly a mere expedient of writers 
who cannot conceive or believe in any fact which tran- 
scends their individual experience. Thus the critics of 
the last century supposed the gods and goddesses in Homer 
to be an ingenious ' machinery for the conduct of the 
piece,' exactly like that of the sylphs and gnomes in the 
' Eape of the Lock,' and with no more reality to the poet's 
own mind ; and the rational philosophers and serious 
Christians fancied themselves required to quibble away 
the admonitions of Socrates to his disciples, to adhere 
to the actual worship of Apollo, or Eros, or Esculapius, 
before either the wisdom or the virtue of the sage could 
be safely or consistently approved : but in the present 
day, we are beginning again to understand the force 
of St. Paul's words when he told the Athenians that 
their poets and philosophers had in their own way been 
trying to feel after and to find a divine Lord, of whose 
presence they were daily conscious and whose offspring 
they believed themselves to be. Isaiah might probably 
have said, as St. Paul did on a like occasion, ' Whether I 
was in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell,' but he 
would undoubtedly have confirmed the plain meaning of 
his words that the vision was a reality and a fact ; nor 
does he in using these words adopt a language essentially 
different from that which has been employed by wise and 
good men — neither fanatics nor impostors — in all countries 
and ages down to this we live in, to describe like inward 
experiences. Thus Wordsworth, who, like every other 
great teacher, is at once the expounder of truths for all 
times, and the thorough man of his own, after describing 
his other endowments as a poet, speaks of — 



INSIGHT INTO THE LIFE OF THINGS. 



*5 



' Another gift, 
Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood 
In which the burden and the mystery, 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world, 
Is lightened : — that serene and blessed mood. 
In which the affections gently lead us on, 
Until the breath of this corporeal frame, 
And even the motion of our human blood 
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
In body, and become a living soul : 
While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
We see into the life of things.' 

Let us thoughtfully bring before ourselves the youthful 
Hebrew seer, with his vigorous and cultivated imagination, 
his piety and faith towards God, and his longing to enter 
on the service of his country in that ministry to which he 
had dedicated himself: let us consider the long mental 
discipline, the conflicts of soul, the hope and despair, the 
watching, the fasting, and the prayer, which alone could 
have formed such a man as the prophet Isaiah actually 
comes before us in each page of his writings : let us think 
of the ' burden and the mystery ' which must have op- 
pressed his spirit when he looked on the wealth and pros- 
perity around him, and thought how glorious his country 
might be, yet how plainly it was going forward to the ruin 
which his study of past history, and of the warnings by 
Moses and his successors the prophets, told him was now 
ready to fall on this corrupt and sense-bound generation : 
let us enter into his heart's desire to save them, if it were 
yet possible, by recalling them to the knowledge of their 
invisible Lord and King whose holy covenant and service 
they had forsaken ; and then into the sickness and despair 
which would replace that hope when he thought of the men 
whom he had just seen assisting at the sacrifices with 
' hands full of blood,' ' the show of their countenances 
witnessing against them,' while the very stones of the 
pavement seemed ready to cry out in God's name ' Tread 
my courts no more : ' let us remember how he felt and 
knew that he too was bound by the same evil nature and 
circumstances as these his countrymen ; how he must have 
been overwhelmed with the sense of what a work he was 
proposing to engage in, and how utterly beyond his or any 



8 6 ILL USTRA TION FROM DREAMS. 



human strength it was ; and how sustained, while over- 
whelmed, by the still deeper sense that there was a Power 
sufficient even for these things : — and then we shall find 
in the above-quoted calm and rational description of the 
experience of an Englishman of the nineteenth century an 
explanation and illustration of the greater part at least of 
what not only may but must have been the mental and 
bodily state of the Hebrew prophet, when he ' saw the 
Lord sitting on a throne.' The partly psychical partly 
physical phenomena involved in this class of questions, 
may have to wait another generation before their turn 
arrives for that scientific investigation and solution which 
in every department of fact and thought is superseding 
the inaccurate theoretical scepticism of the last century : 
we need an exact analysis of that intensified and exalted 
condition of the human mind which has given us language 
in one age, mythology in another, prophecy in another, 
and which still yields philosophy and poetry at least to us 
moderns ; and of that life of the body which must be the 
seat of hearing, sight, and our other senses ; which seems 
to assert an independent existence for itself and for the 
soul in dreams ;* and which may be able in other modes 
to act without the help of those material organs which 
remain to the corpse on the dissecting-table but give it no 
sensations. Yet if we must be content with the faith that 
our children will have a light not given to us in these 
things, we shall I think find that here as in so much 
else, we may — if we will only clearly state to our own 
minds the question which we know we cannot completely 
answer — get a kind and degree of knowledge well worth 

* ' Reasoning operations may be conducted in sleep. Mathematicians have, 
in their slumbers, solved problems which posed them when awake. The great 
mathematician, Condillac, was sometimes enabled in his sleep to bring to 
a satisfactory conclusion speculations which, in the day, were incomplete. 
Cabanis tells us that Franklin so often formed correct and highly important 
conceptions of persons and political events in his sleep, as to have been 
inclined to view his dreams with superstitious reverence, while the real fact 
was, says Cabanis, that the philosopher's acute and sagacious intellect was 
operating even in his sleep. . . . Cases are on record of judges who, in their 
sleep, have delivered decisions of the weightiest kind ; and of poets who, in 
that state, have composed verses of great power and beauty, though they were 
by no means exempt from a certain degree of mystical indistinctness.' — Sleep 
and Dreams, in Miscellanies, by J. A. ISymonds, M.D., pp. 54, 62, where the 
reader will find much more, illustrative of the point we are considering. 



OBJECTIVE REALITY OF REVELATION. 87 



having. For we shall perceive that we are under no 
necessity to resort to rabbinical or quasi-rabbinical figments 
in support of the reality of Isaiah's vision, nor to neological 
devices for getting rid of it : we shall be at least in a 
position to see that there is nothing monstrous in the fact, 
nor irrational in the belief, of a vision such as the prophet 
here describes ; and that we have not here one of those 
prodigies which superstition delights in, and true no less 
than false philosophy recoils from, but an event solemn 
and wonderful indeed, yet having a more matter of fact 
reality and a higher interest to him who seeks to have a 
reason for his faith than to any other man. 

But while we thus recognize the prophet's mental state 
to have been a calm, rational, orderly, human state, we 
must remember that our Christian faith — nay our reason 
when illumined by faith — forbids us to conceive of this 
vision as a mere projection of that mental state, and of the 
seer as beholding only what his own imagination had first 
created. Everything shows how thoroughly Isaiah was 
prepared to become the recipient of a communication from 
on high, but we are not therefore to be content to think 
that after all there was no actual communication, but only 
the supposition of it which would do as well. Let us get 
a real personal knowledge of the messenger (and we must 
get this not from commentators and critics but from hearty 
study of his own words), and then we shall be better able 
to understand the message — the revelation — which God 
has employed that man to take to his brethren : for though 
God can and does speak through instruments unconscious 
of his designs, — a Caesar or a Napoleon, a whirlwind or an 
earthquake, — yet when he would lead us into the know- 
ledge of himself, and of his wisdom and love towards us, 
he speaks only through men whom he has first qualified 
themselves to understand and appreciate the good tidings 
they bear. But our reason will indeed have become folly 
if we deduce from the complete qualifications of the 
messenger that he has no message ; from the perfect 
adaptation of the means to the end, that there is no end. 
If we will be rational, no less than if we will be Christian, 
we must steadily recognize the reality — the objective, 



88 ISAIAH VI i — 7. THE ETERNAL ARCHETYPES. 



independent reality — of that communication which Isaiah 
was thus qualified to become the recipient of. How this 
could be, how God reveals his mind and will to men, how 
the poetic or other human faculty gives form and expres- 
sion to truths not imagined nor discovered, but communi- 
cated from on high, — this can never be explained : an 
explanation is a contradiction in terms, an assertion that 
the Infinite is definable, that the Superhuman is subject 
to the laws, and expressible in terms, of the human. Let 
the understanding attempt to comprehend the Divine, and 
that which it has iu its grasp inevitably proves not to be 
the thing inquired for. We must, and well may, be con- 
tent to know that God has revealed himself to man, and 
thankful that man is capable of receiving and benefiting 
by, though not of defining, that revelation. 

The throng of formal worshippers would have left the 
temple ; the voices of the choirs of singers ' clothed in 
white linen,' and chanting in alternate parts, 

' O give thanks unto Jehovah, for he is good ; 
For his mercy endureth for ever,' 

or some other appointed psalm, would have died into 
silence ; and if other devout Israelites were praying apart 
while the white-robed priest was silently presenting their 
prayers in the fragrant cloud of incense which rose from 
the golden altar in the holy place, the stillness and solem- 
nity of the scene would be thereby heightened rather than 
disturbed. Then the vail of the temple was withdrawn, 
and the holy of holies discovered to the prophet's eyes ; 
and he saw the Lord sitting as a king upon his throne, 
actually governing and judging. His train, the symbol of 
dignity and glory, filled the holy place ; while around him 
hovered the attendant seraphim, spirits of purity, zeal, and 
love, chanting in alternate choirs the holiness of Jehovah : 
the threshold vibrated with the sound, and the ' white 
cloud ' of the divine presence, as if descending to mingle 
itself with the ascending incense of prayer, filled the house. 
The eternal archetypes of the Hebrew's symbolic worship 
were revealed to Isaiah ; and as the centre of them all his 
eyes saw the King, the Lord of Hosts, of whom the actual 



THE KEY TO THE WHOLE BOOK. 



89 



rulers from David to Uzziah had been but the temporary 
and subordinate viceroys. In that presence which con- 
sumes all impurities while none can mix with it, even the 
spirits of fire cover their faces and their feet, conscious 
that they are not pure in God's sight, but justly charge- 
able with imperfection : and much more does Isaiah shrink 
from the aspiring thoughts he had hitherto entertained of 
his fitness to be the preacher of that God to his country- 
men, — he a man of unclean lips, sharing the uncleanness 
of the people among whom he dwells. In deepest self- 
abasement he realizes the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and 
the utter separation it makes between man and the holy 
God. Everywhere else the attendants of the invisible King 
of Israel are cherubims — those symbolical 1 living crea- 
tures ' of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, which are best 
illustrated as to the forms in which they were sculptured, 
embroidered, or conceived, by comparison with the human- 
heacled and winged bulls and lions of Egypt and Assyria. 
The word seraphim (burning ones) in the sense of attend- 
ant angels, occurs only here ; but it may not the less have 
been known in this sense to Isaiah and his contemporaries, 
and have been here preferred as indicating the holiness of 
him to whom they ministered. 

Whether we take this chapter to be the first in actual 
date or no, it is the key to the whole Book ; and the 
announcement which it makes of the holiness of Jehovah 
is the key to the chapter. This vision in the temple was 
to Isaiah what that of the burning bush was to Moses. 
That God had made a covenant with the nation, a true 
' original social contract ' between king and people, and 
of the people among themselves ; that each member of the 
nation was personally responsible for the breach of that 
covenant ; that the holiness and righteousness of God made 
it certain that he would enforce it, at whatever cost to 
the guilty parties; yet that the same righteousness caused 
him to hold the contract binding on himself as well as 
them ; and that therefore he had provided a way of recon- 
ciliation between them and himself through the sacrifice of 
that which separates them ; — this was what was revealed to 
Moses, and became the ground-work of the whole Hebrew 



9 o VITRINGA ON THE SPIRIT OF FIRE. 



polity. And now that a long course of worldly growth and 
progress had almost obliterated this, the old fundamental 
faith of the nation, the same revelation is renewed to Isaiah 
when he is to be sent forth as the restorer of what Moses 
originally established. Every nation arrives from time to 
time at some crisis, when it must either lose all that it has 
hitherto gained, and so fall from its place among the 
nations, or else must shake off the evil and with renewed 
strength go forward in its appointed course. And such a 
crisis had the Jewish nation come to in the time of Isaiah. 
He was to be God's main though not only instrument for 
carrying her through the struggle ; he is therefore first 
made to know his own utter insufficiency, and then to 
realise the sufficiency which comes from God alone. He 
was a Jew, a member of the holy, separated, covenanted 
nation, accustomed to seek purification from the stains of 
conduct in the rites of the law, and able to understand 
how those rites were morally efficacious when God accepted 
the sacrifice of the selfish will by the man of contrite 
heart. But now the exceeding sinfulness of sin itself, 
of his nature not of his acts, was discovered to him ; and 
he needed the fire from the altar to be applied to his own 
lips, and not to the bullock or the goat he might have 
brought for sacrifice, and by God's own ministry and 
not by the earthly priest : and this was done, as a sacra- 
mental and efficacious pledge that he had now received 
that inmost purification which John, the last of the pro- 
phets, calls ' the baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire.' * 
' Fire,' says Vitringa, ' is something pure, burning, puri- 
fying ; it lays hold of, penetrates, and, as it were, converts 
into its own substance whatever is susceptible of its action, 
thus hallowing the gifts laid on the altar. All these are 
the attributes of the Holy Spirit, whose office it is to 
purge and illuminate man, to excite him to the love of 
God, to affect him with zeal for his glory, to arouse him 
from sloth to fervour, to inflame him with courage and 
constancy, with energy and devotion of all his powers to 
the cause of God, and to enable him to make supplications 
to God according to his will. And in this place fire sig- 

* Compare St. Paul's conversion, Acts ix. 



ISAIAH VI 8 — 13. PIURAL OF MAJESTY. 91 



nifies the spirit of prophecy, which spirit, like fire, sancti- 
fies men in a peculiar manner to this great work, kindles, 
inflames, makes them glow with zeal ; and, what is true in 
itself and specially applicable here, converts them into 
seraphs.' Jehovah desired a willing messenger ; therefore 
he does not command Isaiah to take on him the office, but 
gives him opportunity to do so if he be willing. And the 
prophet, now filled with the spirit of Jehovah, and feeling 
that by that spirit he is made holy, immediately proposes 
himself as ready to accept the commission. 

It has been, and is still discussed, whether, in the words 
' Who will go for us ? ' as in the like use of the plural 
pronoun in other places in the Old Testament, there is a 
reference to the Trinity ; or whether the phrase is ' merely 
the plural of majesty,' or some other idiom. There is 
something opposed to all our present habits of thought and 
criticism in the notion that a word of this kind can be 
made to prove a dogma ; yet to the mind which recog- 
nises a deeper meaning in words than the merely gram- 
matical, the latter explanation will seem a very poor 
substitute for the old dogmatic interpretation. It would 
be better to ask what is the origin of the ' plural of 
majesty.' Majesty, or greatemess, is the attribute of the 
personal head of a body, not that of a solitary individual. 
/ is the word of mere will, good or evil ; %ve, that of 
counsel, fellowship, and co-operation ; and the plural of 
the latter expresses a higher unity than the singular of 
the former. There is a higher unity in the marriage of 
man and wife than in the single half-existence of either 
separately, and in the Godhead which is the object of the 
Christian's faith than in the solitary Being whom the 
Mahometan or other Theist worships. ' The first cause,' 
says Aristotle, ' is the last in discovery : ' when it is at 
last revealed, we can look back and trace its workings in 
forms where it could not have been recognized at the 
time, and thus we, by the fulness of the light of the 
Gospel, can see in the language which combines the plural 
Elohim with the singular Jehovah, the preludings of that 
revelation of the Trinity in Unity which the spirit of man 
was not yet educated to • receive in its spiritual meaning, 



TO HEAR AND NOT UNDERSTAND. 



and the formal announcement of which could therefore 
have only confirmed and perpetuated his natural proneness 
to polytheism. 

The prophet is ' sent.' has a commission. This, as I 
have already pointed out,* is implied in the Hebrew word 
which we translate 'prophet.' The Jew understood him 
to be ' one who spoke not his own words, but those of 
another ; ' one who was sent from God as his ambassador 
and interpreter. And this is the commission : — ' Go, say 
to this people,' — not, as usual, to 'my people;' but as to 
a people cast off by their Lord, — that warning shall only 
harden them in their evil courses until they have been 
punished to the uttermost. ' To hear and not to under- 
stand ' is used by Demosthenes as a proverb. To make 
the heart ' fat,' that is ' dull/ corresponds with the like 
usage of the words irayy? and pinguis. The meaning of 
these threatenings, with their stern irony, must be limited 
and explained by the consideration that they are national, 
directed against a nation and its members as such, and that 
they neither imply, nor sanction, any — so-called Calvinistic 
— doctrine of spiritual perdition. If they had been willing to 
walk in the ways of righteousness they would have received 
ever-increasing light and power to do so, and their national 
prosperity would have been in proportion. But they shall 
not retain that prosperity for mere selfish ends. They 
might be willing in the hour of adversity to ' convert and 
be healed ' in some sense which would enable them to 
return to the enjoyment of their former prosperity, but in 
hardening their minds and hearts against the moral and 
spiritual teachings of the prophet they will have so deadened 
their higher faculties that they shall not be able to find 
and take that course which is indeed for their own interest, 
but which only the disinterested righteous can attain to. 
And so the warnings of the prophet may be said to be the 
cause of their reprobate condition, f Still the ultimate 
object is not destruction but reformation, so that it be 
inward and not merely outward. To secure its inward 

*Page 10. 

f These doctrines, that blindness is the punishment of depravity, that a 
repentance is futile which aims at retaining the gain for which the offence 



DESTRUCTION AND RESTORATION: 



reality, even when the nation is reduced to a tenth this 
small remnant shall again be tried by the fire ; but the 
end shall be that all that is really holy and worthy in the 
life of the nation shall spring again from the old roots of 
the tree which has been cut down to the ground. The 
final assertion of Jehovah's right ousness shall be love, not 
power. 

We, reading this prophecy in the light of history, can 
say that if it were anywhere necessary thus to assert God's 
righteousness against sin, most especially was it so in this 
the chosen nation of Israel. Israel had been set apart, 
that in him all the nations of the earth should be blessed ; 
and if he became reprobate, where were this promise to the 
world ? — ' If gold rusteth, what should iron do ? ' There- 
fore the cities were to be wasted without inhabitant, and 
the land utterly desolate ; and even after a partial recovery 
from this punishment, and a humble restoration of a small 
part of their ancient glory, the stern process should be 
repeated again and again : the invasion of Pekah and 
Rezin would be repaired only to be followed by that of 
Sennacherib ; the captivity of Manasseh would succeed 

was committed, and that no repentance is possible to him who is the slave of 
his sins, may be illustrated from Shakspeare ; — the first from Antony and 
Cleopatra, iii. 11, 

' But when we in our viciousness grow hard, 

O misery on't ! the wise gods seel our eyes ; 

In our own filth drop our clear judgments ; make us 

Adore our errors ; laugh at us while we strut 

To our confusion.' 
the others from Samlet, iii. 3, 

4 But, 0, what form of prayer 

Can serve my turn ? Forgive me my foul murder ! — 

That cannot be ; since I am still possess'd 

Of those effects for which I did the murder, 

My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. 

May one be pardon' d, and retain the offence ? 

In the corrupted currents of this world, 

Offence's gilded hands may shove by justice ; 

And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself 

Buys out the law : But 'tis not so above : 

There is no shuffling, there the action lies 

In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd, 

Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, 

To give in evidence. What then ? What rests ? 

Try what repentance can : What can it not ? 

Tet what can it, when one can not repent ? 

O wretched state ! 0 bosom, black as death ! 

0 limed soul : that struggling to be free, 

Art more engaged ! ' 



9+ 



THE END OF ISAIAH'S HOPES. 



the peaceful reign of Hezekiah ; Josiah would restore the 
kingdom only to be laid waste by the Egyptian and the 
Assyrian ; the Roman would come after the Greek, and 
even Hadrian after Titus. All thought of an earthly glory 
of the nation must give way before such a prospect. If 
the prophet could have looked so far forward, and with a 
patriot's hopes alone, there was nothing but humiliation 
and despair before him ; he could at most expect but such 
temporary alleviation and restoration as might enable him 
to do his work while he was there. No doubt — we shall 
come upon the proofs immediately — the prophet did not 
in the earlier years of his ministry take this view of the 
meaning of the promise with which the divine commission 
concludes ; but still trusted that the holy seed, the sub- 
stance of the nation, would spring up again, even in his 
own day. and Israel be restored to more than its pristine 
prosperity and power among the nations, as well as to its 
first and pure faith in Jehovah. And when the terrible 
truth did at last become clear to him, he had been pre- 
pared to understand, and to declare to his own people, and 
to mankind, what more than adequate compensation was 
still left behind. 

I have followed what seems the more probable meaning 
of verse 13, yet venture to observe that the Authorized 
Version makes a satisfactory sense, if we understand an 
allusion (by one of those poetical transitions which cha- 
racterize Isaiah's strong imagination) to the tithes, the 
sacred portion of the produce of the land, and to their 
being duly gathered in and eaten by those to whom they 
pertained, and not to any wasteful consumption of them. 
Whether the concluding image of the teil (or terebinth) 
and the oak trees, is that of their casting their leaves, or 
of their being cut down, like the tree in Nebuchadnezzar's 
dream, is uncertain. In either case the idea of the life 
subsisting under the apparent death is the same. 



CHAPTER VI. 



ISAIAH VII. — THE ACCESSION OF AHAZ. — POLITICAL STATE OF KING ANT) 

PEOPLE. ' JEHOVAH SAID.' — TOPOGRAPHY OF JERUSALEM. THE VIRGIN 

CONCEIVING. — THE INCARNATION AN UNIVERSAL IDEA — HOW REALIZED. — 
LOSS OF HEBREW INDEPENDENCE. — ISAIAH NOT A MAGICIAN. 

THE next, and following prophecies, to the end of chapter 
xvi., belong, with more or less clearness, to the reign 
of Ahaz. The ' And ' with which the narrative opens 
here, and in chapter viii., has already been noticed among 
the indications that the book has been arranged as a 
continuous whole ; the narrative itself connects a suc- 
cession of discourses spread over at least a year (chap, 
viii. 2, 3) ; while the phrases of verse 1 — ' it came to pass 
in the days of Ahaz,' and ' he was not able to take it ' — 
mark that it was written after the events had become 
history, and probably after the death of Ahaz. 

The reign of Jotham was characterized (as I have already 
observed) by the same material prosperity and order, internal 
and external, political and religious, as that of his father 
Uzziah : the difference (not easily perceptible at the time) 
will have been that a new generation was grown up, ener- 
vated by peace and luxury, and trusting as a matter of 
course to old traditional routine, when they were on the 
eve of events to which it would be as inapplicable as that 
of the Austrians and Prussians in the generation after that 
of Frederic the Great was to meet the young enthusiasm 
of the French under Napoleon. 

The three narratives of these events — that before us, 
and those in the books of Kings and Chronicles — are very 
brief ; and while each gives some facts not mentioned in 
the other, they all leave us without sufficient information 
to enable us to arrange the whole in chronological order. 



gb ISAIAH VII 1—9. THE INVASION OF JUDAH. 



But thus much we can say : — In the last years of Jotham's 
reign, Pekah king of Israel, and Rezin, king of Syria, made 
an alliance against Judah ; and the accession of the weak 
youth Ahaz gave them a favourable opportunity for their 
}3urpose. A great battle annihilated the old army of 
Uzziah (as that of Jena did the army of Frederic); the 
invaders plundered and wasted the whole country, and 
carried off a great number of men, women, and children, 
of whom the share of the Syrians was sold into slavery at 
Damascus, while that of the Ephraimites was sent back by 
the intervention of the prophet Obed, who recognized, and 
induced his countrymen to recognize, a bond and claim of 
brotherhood in the common blood and faith which their 
national enmities had lost sight of. But the best com- 
mentators differ — for the remaining records are insufficient 
to inform us — whether the battle occurred before or after 
the advance which Ahaz was now expecting against his 
capital. On the one hand it may be argued, that up to 
the destruction of his army Ahaz, and his princes and 
people, would have retained the insolent self-confidence 
denounced by Isaiah in the previous chapters ; and that 
it was when their scoffing demand, that ' J ehovah would 
hasten his work that they might see it,' had been granted ; 
and when they heard that the allies were preparing for a 
second invasion, of which the object was not merely the 
reaping another year's harvest of plunder, but also the 
taking of Jerusalem, the deposition of the house of David, 
and the permanent subjection of the kingdom to the son 
of Tabeal, apparently intended to be a viceroy or tributary 
king, like those whom the Assyrian kings, in their lately 
deciphered annals, habitually speak of setting up ;"* — , 
that then the people and their rulers were panic-struck; 
' and their hearts were moved, as the trees of the wood 
are moved by the wind.' We should then understand by 
' Syria resteth upon Ephraim,' either ' has renewed the 

* Dr. Schrader (Die Keilinschrif ten uitd das Alte Testament, pp. 118,120, 
145, 147), finds the names of Tabeal of Aram (Ti-bi'-i-lu mat A-ru-mu), Pezin 
of Damascus (Ra-sun-nu Dimaskai), Pekah of Beth-Omri or Samaria (mat 
Bit-Hu-um-ri Pa-ka-ha), and Ahaz of Judah (Ja-hu-ha-zi Ja-hu-da-ai), in 
the inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser ; but not in any farther connection, with 
the events of this chapter than that they mention Pekah's death, and that the 
others were tributaries to Assyria. 



PREPARING FOR A SIEGE. 



97 



old alliance/ which, considering the disorganized and half- 
barbarized state of these petty governments, was likely 
enough to have been only made for single campaigns; or 
else ' has encamped on the territory of Ephraim,' in pre- 
paration for a fresh march into Judsea : and the scornful 
phrase, ' the two tails of these smoking firebrands,' would 
imply that they had already been wasting the country, 
and that the prophet foresaw that their power was just 
extinct. On the other hand it is urged that the language 
of the narrative before us — of the enemy ' taking counsel 
to go up,' and Ahaz preparing against a siege — implies 
that this march of the allies against J erusalem was the be- 
ginning of their invasion, and of the calamities that marked 
the reign of Ahaz, and that we cannot otherwise account 
for the slighting manner in which Isaiah speaks of the 
designs and power of the enemy, and for the absence of 
any allusion on his part to those great calamities if they 
had already occurred. 

We can, however, form a distinct image of the position 
of Jerusalem and its people at the time at which this pro- 
phecy was delivered ; and we see its correspondence with 
that described in chapter i. 

There is pathos, as well as force and propriety, in the 
phrase ' the house of David ' in this place. David had 
succeeded in uniting the ancient parties of Israel and 
Judah into one strong monarchy:* when it was told him 
that the kings of the earth were gathering themselves to- 
gether against him, he felt no fear, but went forth at the 
head of his armies, and in the name of Jehovah destroyed 
them ; and among other nations whom he thus reduced, 
were the Syrians of Damascus, whose capital he garrisoned, 
and made themselves tributary. And now, the house of 
David had not only long lost the tribes of Israel, but was 
trembling for its own existence, threatened by those tribes 
' with a rage that reached up to heaven,' and were now 
returning in confederacy with this very Syria. And the 
faith no less than the might of David had departed from 
him who sat in David's throne : Ahaz had no trust in 
Jehovah the Lord of the nation, and therefore his heart 

* 2 Sam. v. 1—5. 
H 



9 8 ISAIAH VII. 1—3. 'THEN SAID JEHOVAH: 



was moved, and he called on Assyria and Assyria's gods to 
help him. 

' Then said J ehovah unto Isaiah ' — not by some mira- 
culous communication, alien from all human experience, 
and of which neither the reality nor the worth is proved 
by saying that Isaiah's writings are a part of the Bible ; 
but by that inward and spiritual command which is daily 
and hourly telling each of us what is our work, and how 
we are to do it. Luther, in his Commentary on Genesis, 
in the midst of statements which show that he had no 
doubts of the occurrence of miracles either in his own 
or any other age, makes singular efforts to give a non- 
miraculous character to the expression 'Jehovah said;' 
explaining that it was Adam who spoke to Eve, Shem to 
Abraham, and so on. The great preacher of the Word 
felt and knew that the mightiest, divinest, presence and 
power of God's spirit manifested itself through properly 
human discourse, and not by some voice in the air. When 
it is taught and received for orthodox that God only 
revealed himself to men in former times by certain occa- 
sional and external miracles, and that our knowledge of 
him is limited to what has been written down of such 
communications, we have reason to fear that we have too 
little sense that God is always actively present with us 
noAv, and to suspect that our belief is mechanical, and 
sceptical and superstitious at once. A Luther, or even a 
Cromwell, would have shrunk from dishonouring the spirit 
of God within him, by supposing that it was not by the 
same wisdom and the same power as inspired Isaiah that 
he spoke and acted, in the Diet of Worms, or on the field 
of Dunbar. 

Ancient topography is often obscure, even when learned 
men get to the spot with their books in their hands, be- 
cause the surface of the sites has been perpetually changing, 
both by the natural waste or accumulation of the soil, 
and by the successive demolition and construction of build- 
ings, age after age ; and the most recent explorations have 
not yet finally decided some of the most important points 
in the topography of Jerusalem. But they all — as far as 
I can judge — tend to the conclusion that what I may call 



TOPOGRAPHY OF JERUSALEM. 



99 



the provisional topography of Mr. Fergusson* gives the 
most correct, as it certainly does the most coherent means 
for forming a notion of what must have taken place on 
the various occasions in which we require a picture — if it 
must be partly a fancy one — of the Jerusalem of the day. 
And I therefore here assume the highway of the ' Fuller's 
Field ' to have been outside the northern gate which 
opened into the road to Samaria, f We see from chapter 
x. 28 — 32 that an army marching on Jerusalem might 
be expected upon the north side of the city, where the 
ground within and without the walls was nearly on the 
same level, while on the west, south, and east deep and 
precipitous ravines formed strong natural intrenchments. 
And as far as history has recorded, the main attack in 
successive sieges was — no doubt for this reason — from the 
north. The principal attacks of Antiochus Sidetes and of 
Pompey were on the north ; and Titus took up a position 
in this quarter ; while its traditional name of the Assyrian 
camp recorded the former presence of the army of Rab- 
shakeh, or possibly of Nebuchadnezzar. 

Isaiah, like the other prophets, taught not only by verbal 
discourse, but also by symbolical acts, which, especially in 
those times, gave a life and force to the former which it 
would not have had by itself. Accordingly he now takes 
with him his son Shear-jashub (' a remnant shall return,' 
or c be converted'), who was not improbably born during 
the grief and terror of the earlier invasion (in which Isaiah 
may himself have lost other children or relations), and was 
thus named as a sign to the people + of the warnings and 
promises which he had already begun to deliver. He 
finds Ahaz, no doubt accompanied, in oriental fashion, 
by a throng of people, just outside the wall of the city, 
examining the state of the fortifications, and of the reser- 
voirs which, fed by the brook Gihon, were situated in that 

* Topography of Ancient Jerusalem ; and article Jerusalem, in Smith's 
Dictionary of the Bible. 

f Captain Wilson thinks the aqueduct discovered in this quarter hy Mr. 
Shick in 1871 may he ' the conduit of the highwa3 T of the fuller's field.' 
Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, April, 1872. Josephus says 
' the fuller's monument ' was on the north side of the city. See farther 
"below, on chapter xxii. 

% Compare chap. viii. 18. 

H 2 



ioo ISAIAH VII. 4—9. HELP PROMISED, 



quarter, and which it was now necessary to provide for the 
defence of, that they might neither be available to the 
expected besiegers nor cut off by them from supplying 
the city. The fullers had their works there for the con- 
venience of the water, and the causeway which led to their 
fulling ground was a convenient place for the purposes of 
both Ahaz and Isaiah, just as it suited Kab-shakeh* when 
it was his object both to reconnoitre the ground for a 
siege, and also to harangue the people on the walls. 

Hitherto we have known the prophet as a writer, and 
through his writings ; now he comes before us as a speaker. 
The present and following chapters (vii. i. ; ix. 7) are 
much more like short reports of actual speeches than the 
first five chapters ; and the narrative and oration together 
give us a lively picture of how Isaiah did speak, or preach, 
there in Jerusalem. 

Isaiah tells Ahaz not to fear any further mischief from 
these two firebrands, now all but burnt out : each prides 
himself in his nation and city, and in himself as the head 
of these ; each may have some right to that position, 
though in the term ' Eemaliah's son,' the prophet seems 
to allude to the fact that Pekah was the son of a usurper, 
and not of the royal blood ; but neither they nor their 
instrument — perhaps also described in scorn as the son of 
Tabeal instead of by his own name — shall ever be the head 
of Judah. Jehovah laughs them to scorn, and decrees 
that their policy shall not stand nor come to pass, but 
that they themselves shall be broken instead, and be no 
more nations. Yet to this prediction of the overthrow of 
the invaders of Judah, he adds that Judah too shall like- 
wise perish if it repents not : ' If ye will not believe, 
surely ye shall not be established.' If they would believe, 
if they would trust in Jehovah, their King and their God, 
as their fathers had trusted before them, they would need 
no other help against their enemies. This we may be sure 
from the whole character of Isaiah's teaching was his first 
meaning now. But he would have foreseen that the 
Assyrians might be speedily expected again in Syria and 
in Ephraim, both which countries they had already 

* Chap, xxxvi. 2. 



INCREDULITY OF AHAZ. 



ior 



reduced more than once to subjection.* Pekah had 
deposed the son of Assyria's vassal, Menahem, and it has 
been inferred with some probability that their plan for 
conquering Judah may have been part of a scheme for 
alliance with Egypt against Assyria. We see that the 
jwties in the anarchy into which the kingdom of Ephraim 
was now falling applied alternately to Assyria and to 
Egypt,t and that the international relations of these 
kingdoms was now such as to make a conflict probable 
between them seems indicated in verse 18 of this chapter. 
Various attempts have been made to clear up the obscure 
parallelism of verses 8 and 9, and the still greater obscurity 
of the date ' sixty-five/ which latter cannot be proved 
either to agree or to disagree with history, as we can 
neither fix the exact year of this prediction, nor of any 
event to which it might refer. Some have cut the knot 
by pronouncing the last half of verse 8 to be a gloss 
introduced into the text. But if it be genuine, the 
number ' sixty-five ' seems best explained as a definite 
for an indefinite number, and as meaning ' within the time 
of men now living.' This may seem too remote a deliver- 
ance to have afforded much consolation to those whom 
the prophet was now addressing ; but he immediately 
brings the term within nearer and more precise limits. 

Ahaz heard in sullen and incredulous silence ; and the 
prophet resumes, — ' Ask thee a sign of J ehovah thy God : 
ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.' — But 
Ahaz, who looked on Jehovah not as his God, but only 
(like any of his heathen neighbours) as the god of Judaea, 
and as such inferior to the god of Assyria ; and who had 
determined to apply to the king of Assyria, or perhaps had 
already applied to him, as a more trustworthy helper than 
Jehovah, in the present strait ; declines to ask a sign, 
excusing himself by a canting use of the words of Moses, 
'Thou shall not tempt Jehovah.' He refused the sign, 
because he knew it would confirm the still struggling voice 
of his conscience ; and that voice he had resolved not to 

* Jehu, Benhadad, Menahem, and Hazael, are all named in the Inscrip- 
tions, and Menahem in 2 Kings xv. 19, as paying tribute to Assyria, 
t Hosea ix. 3, xi. 5, xii. 1. 



io2 ISAIAH VII. 10—16. THE SIGN OFFERED. 



obey, since it bid him give up the Assyrian, and trust in 
Jehovah henceforth. 

Many of the best authorities, ancient and modern, 
translate the words quoted above — ' Ask thee a sign of 
Jehovah thy God, going down to hell, or going up to 
heaven.' But it may be doubted whether Isaiah, even in 
a moment of prophetic enthusiasm, would have proposed 
such a choice to Ahaz. We may rather infer from the 
signs which he himself offered on this and on other 
occasions,* the like intention now. If Isaiah had offered 
to perform a miracle, the narrative before us would hardly 
have been given in its present shape, in which the promise 
of 1 the maiden with child' is treated as a far higher sign 
than any which could be exhibited in the depths of earth 
or height of heaven. A comparison with Exod. hi. 12, 
and Isaiah xxxvii. 30, throws some light upon the use of 
the word ' sign' in the present instance, and upon the 
mental state of the speaker arid hearers which could recog- 
nize a propriety in a sign of which the force was only to 
be seen after the event. There may seem little difficulty 
in the whole passage to those who are content to ' take for 
granted' that it has some good meaning, and to express 
this feeling in the accustomed formula that ' the words are 
a prophecy of Christ ; ' but he who tries to discover what 
the meaning really is — what ' a prophecy of Christ' means 
— will find need for further examination. To believe in a 
person, is to trust him because we know and love him ; but 
to believe a narrative, an argument, or a prophecy, about 
him, is to understand it. And to understand the passage 
before us, we must understand what manner of man the 
speaker was ; what he was actually saying, and meaning ; 
what import his words had to those who heard him ; what 
import they have to us. We must, if possible, bridge over 
the gulf of apparently unknown depth and width which 
separates us from Isaiah, as he stood that day ' at the end 
of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the 
fuller's field.' 

On the refusal of Ahaz to ask a sign of Jehovah's faith- 



* Vv. 14, 15, 16; viii. 3,4, 18; xx. 3; xxxvii. 30 ; xxxviii. 7. 



ECSTASF OF ORATORS. 



103 



fulness to his people, Isaiah breaks into an apostrophe — 
the utterance at once of an orator and a poet — in which 
the speaker is carried forward by the power of a mental 
impulse which for the time controls him, rather than he it. 
No one who has listened to a great orator, or even read the 
words of an impassioned writer like Burke or Carlyle, can 
be wholly unaware that the one and the other is, for the 
time, possessed and mastered by such a power ; — a power 
which men in all times and nations have continually recog- 
nized as spiritual and divine, and which we have been too 
much deterred from so acknowledging, because we see it 
employed for bad as well as for good ends, and forget that 
nowhere in the world of nature is this mysterious mix- 
ture of good and evil absent. And this elevated, ecstatic 
frame of the orator, as of the poet, is still more marked 
among southern and eastern nations. I have been told 
that Mazzini's denunciations of the oppressor, and predic- 
tions of his country's future social and political regenera- 
tion, were at times uttered by him with an inconceivable 
fervour, rising into the tone of song rather than of mere 
eloquence. The reader's own observation and experience 
will supply him with other illustrations, sufficient to enable 
him to realize this characteristic of the prophet — that he 
was an orator, whose oratory was of the noblest kind for 
manner no less than matter, and that consequently as often 
as his love of his country and his zeal for his God raised 
him to the height of some great argument, his words 
necessarily became, as in the present instance, the expres- 
sion of thoughts and feelings which passed beyond the 
limits which, in a cooler moment, perhaps only the moment 
before or after, his senses and logical faculty would have 
imposed upon them. The thoughts and feelings were 
really his, and such as the whole culture of his life, intel- 
lectual, moral, religious, had made it possible for them to 
be, yet such as only an occasion like the present could 
have called into expression. Isaiah had gone down to 
the Fuller's Field intending in his own mind to address 
the king in the words which we have in verses 4 — 9, and 
to support this address by such symbolic emphasis as an 
oriental people would feel at the sight of the child Shear- 



104 



IMMANUEL. 



jashub. And it may already have occurred to him — or, if 
not, he took it as the fitting course immediately afterwards 
— to resolve, and publicly announce his resolution, to call 
his next child by a name which should assure all who 
heard it of the promise that they should be speedily 
delivered from the now threatening danger ; and thus to 
offer this second, and yet unborn son, as a new sign to the 
king and people, like that already given them in Shear- 
jashub. But his spirit was stirred by the behaviour of 
Ahaz, first to offer any other sign the unbelieving king 
chose, and next, still indeed to couple his warnings and 
promises with a reference to the unborn child, but now in 
language not for that age but for all times : the vision 
rises before him, the bounds of time and place fade away, 
and he says, — ' Hear ye now, 0 house of David, is it a 
small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my 
God also ? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a 
sign : behold a maiden with child and bearing a son, and 
she calls his name Immanuel (God with us).' I think it 
will become more apparent that there is something of pas- 
sion and ecstasy in these words, and that they must be so 
read in order to their adequate understanding, when we 
proceed to examine the view of those commentators who 
see no such element in them. This view, in its most com- 
plete form is, that the ( maiden ' was the wife of Isaiah — 
either the mother of Shear-jashub, or another wife whom he 
had now married, or was just about to marry — whose 
next, or first, born child should be called Immanuel, 
and who subsequently became the mother of a third 
child, Maher-shalal-hash-baz. The Hebrew word which 
the Authorized Version here translates ' Virgin ' is 
not nb^rQ, which has more precisely and properly that 
meaning, but rmb^ which, from its derivation, primarily 
expresses the idea of adolescence, youthful life, while 
assuming, rather than like nb^ns, asserting, the sense of 
virginity to be included in it. So that the word would be 
more nearly represented in English by ' maiden' (as I have 
therefore preferred to give it), or still better by 'girl,' or 
' lass,' but that these words are too colloquial ; — as will be 
seen by reference to the other passages in which the word 



MESSIANIC INTERPRETATION. 



occurs.* And though in all these places, except Pro v. xxx. 
19 (which indeed seems to me no exception), the word 
means an unmarried woman, many scholars hold, as I have 
said, that it may here indicate the young wife of Isaiah, or 
at least another, as yet unmarried, whom he was just about 
to take. And the article which is prefixed to rrftb^, may 
then perhaps point her out as such : — the wife for my wife, 
as the master for my master. This explanation meets one 
difficulty which has not yet been completely cleared up if 
we take the other — the Messianic — interpretation — namely, 
that the Messiah was to come of the house of David, and 
that the words of verses 15 and 16 which point to an 
infant not born at the time at which the prophet was 
speaking, can hardly have referred to Hezekiah, the then 
heir to the throne, who was now probably nine years old, 
although we see from chapter ix. 6, 7, and xi. 1 — 9, that 
it was in this young prince that Isaiah in the earlier years 
of his ministry expected to see the hope of the Messiah 
realized. But we only solve one difficulty by another : if 
we compare this description of the mother of Immanuel with 
that in chapter viii. 3, in which Isaiah is undoubtedly 
speaking of his wife and unborn child, we see such a 
difference as makes it improbable that they are also 
intended directly and merely in the former words too. 
There is the difference between matter of fact and vision, 
and the mention of Immanuel corresponds with that of the 
' Child' in chapter ix. 6, 7, and not with that of Maher- 
shalal-hash-baz, or Shear-jashub. There are no mental 
phenomena in our own day which exactly reproduce this 
prophetic vision ; but I think we can realize it sufficiently 
to see that it is intelligible as an expression of the human 
mind and faculties, if we recognize as its condition the 
expectation of a Messiah, and the grounds of that expecta- 
tion in our human, as well as in Jewish, life. 

There is evidence of the anticipation of a personal 
Messiah by the Hebrews from very early times, and of its 
continually acquiring a more distinct and positive cha- 
racter, though from the fact that it does go back so far we 

* Genesis xxiv. 43 ; Exod. ii. 8 ; Psalm lxviii. 25 ; Cant. i. 3. ri. 8 ; 
Proverbs xxx. 19. 



106 MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS. 

cannot seize its earliest forms with certainty. But the 
prophecy of Micah, Isaiah's younger contemporary, is an 
instance of the form which it was taking in the time 
before us. He says : — ' But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, 
though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet 
out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler 
in Israel : whose goings forth have been from the begin- 
ing, from the days of old. Therefore will he give them up 
until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth : 
then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the 
children of Israel, and he shall stand and feed in the 
strength of Jehovah, in the majesty of the name of 
Jehovah his God : and they shall abide, for now shall 
he be great unto the ends of the earth.'"'' 5 " Even if we 
should assume that this prediction was suggested by 
that of Isaiah (though the differences indicate at least 
a partial independence), or suppose both to refer to 
some earlier prophecy, they are not the less indications 
of a national belief and expectation of a mysterious birth 
of the Messiah. Nor can we avoid connecting them 
with that most ancient tradition of 'the seed of the 
woman' on the one hand, and with that state of the 
national Jewish mind on the other which is implied in the 
narratives of Matthew and Luke, who relate the incarnation 
of Jesus Christ as an event miraculous indeed, yet not con- 
trary or alien from the ancient faith, but as the fulfilment 
of its deepest anticipations. Nor was this faith peculiar to 
the Hebrews ; a belief in, or expectation of, an Immanuel — 
or incarnate God — has prevailed in other times, and among 
other nations ; and so strong was the vitality of this belief 
among the Greeks and Romans, that when the progress of 
intellect had made it impossible for them to retain it 
any longer in its old mythological forms, they revived it 
in the assertion of the divinity of the emperors ; and 
Tacitus, Suetonius, and Yirgil tell us of various other 
shapes in which it was presenting itself in those times of 
scepticism and civilization. Brahminism and Buddhism 
are witnesses of the same pervading instinct of mankind ; 
and not less so is the reception of Christianity by every 

* Micah v. 2—4. 



FACTS AND DOCTRINES. 



107 



tribe of the human race, as something not foreign, but 
most congenial, to their religious — that is, their deepest — 
wants and sympathies. We too, Christians in the nine- 
teenth century, have some evidence to give in the matter. 
We stand on a vantage-ground which enables us to see the 
relations of things, and consequently their meaning, in a 
way not otherwise possible ; and we believe in J esus Christ, 
who was born of the Virgin Mary. That old creed is the 
expression to and for us of a series of facts 45 " (not doctrines) 
at once historical, and in the inmost relation to our own 
spiritual and personal life and experience. And we must 
deal with these facts by the same method as that by which 
we study any other facts, and which to depart from is to write 
mere words without meaning. For non-acquaintance with 
these facts in a student of the Bible is what non-acquaintance 
with the existence of the stars and planets would be in 
astronomy, or with that of mountains and rivers in geology. 
But let us take our stand on the facts of the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ ; let us look for the law in the facts ; and 
then we shall be able to examine all past history, and 
especially the history of the Hebrew nation, in the light of 
that law. It then appears that it was no fancy, but the 
assertion of a law of universal ethnology, which foretold 
that in the race of Abraham ' all nations of the earth 
should be blessed.' The Romans were called to embody 
and develop in their institutions the ideas of law and of 
municipal and imperial government ; the Greeks to in- 
struct mankind in free inquiry, philosophy, and art ; every 
other tribe and people, which has not abandoned its 
duty by sinking into mere brute life, has contributed its 
larger or smaller waters to the great stream of human life 
and progress ; and the Hebrews were appointed to set forth 
and realize in their polity and literature the true relation 
of man to God, and — what the mere recognition of the 
'religious sentiment' overlooks — the relation of God to 
man. He who has looked into his own heart, and there 
learnt that his religion, his faith, consists not in this 
religious sentiment, but in God's revelation and com- 

* This is not the place to prove that they are facts : but I admit that if 
they are not my reasoning has no force. 



io8 



REVELATION. 



munication of himself to him in his Son Jesus Christ, can 
then look around and behind him, and see that the same 
God did in past times reveal himself in several and suc- 
cessive manifestations to and through this Hebrew nation. 
Their whole polity is seen to be a preparation for an 
universal society which is to spring out of it ; their whole 
literature shapes itself to become a manual for that society ; 
that fundamental idea which philosophers say lies at the 
root of every nation, and by which its multitude uncon- 
sciously, and its rulers and teachers with more or less 
perception of its presence, are age after age urged forward 
to their appointed gaol, as by force of irresistible law, was 
in the Hebrews the idea of the coming of a Lord and King 
of mankind no less than of their own people. They could 
not have been fit for any of these ends if they had been 
less human, and if their polity had been less in harmony 
with the laws of man and the universe than the polities 
of the Greeks and Komans : it needed to be more in har- 
mony, and it must have been more so in fact, for more 
of it has been able to survive, and pass into new and ver: 
diverse forms of society. But being fit for these, because 
the original laws and subsequent developments of their 
polity and literature lay in such near relation with the 
ultimate laws of human nature and society, they were thus 
also fitted — fitted by God who has created and governs 
the universe according to the counsel of his own will — to 
become the channel of God's revelation of himself to all 
mankind. The question whether there actually is such a 
revelation in the Bible is a question of fact, and must be 
settled by each of us for himself, just as each settles for 
himself on the evidence of fact, and not of argument, whethe" 
there is a sun which gives light and heat to his body ; bu 
to those who have found such a revelation there, it i 
plain that Christ being the centre of the revelation all that 
comes before him will have a prophetic character. All 
nature, all humanity, must be prophetic if it is progres- 
sive, and its progress the unfolding of the powers of a law 
inherent in it from the first : the philosophy of the Greeks, 
the municipalities of the Romans, could be nothing to u 
now if they — that is, the law in them, and cause of their 



ISAIAH'S OWN CHILD. 



109 



existing effects — had not anticipated all their present 
fruits ; and even the warlike ambition, which brought the 
seeds of these, and many such things, into Britain or else- 
where, was a part of the same anticipatory working of the 
same law. And it is not less evident that reason and 
historical science require us to recognize the like workings 
in the growth of the Hebrew commonwealth and people, and 
in their relations to their Creator and their fellow men. 

If then we find these to be sufficient grounds for think- 
ing that Isaiah, an actual practical politician of the day in 
which he lived, could have now thought and spoken of the 
old promise of the Messiah as the true sign of God's de- 
liverance of the land from its invaders, then we may not un- 
reasonably return to the belief that such was his meaning. 
We do not escape all difficulty ; but I think we have the 
difficulty of completely comprehending the life of prophecy 
instead of that of being satisfied with its caput mortuum* 
And if so, we may be content to say that in the vehemence 
of inspiration, Isaiah exclaims, ' J ehovah himself gives you 
for a sign the Mother and the Child,' and then returning 
to the scene before him fuses into one image the birth of 
the Immanuel and that of his own child, t and declares, in 
direct reference to the latter, that before he has learnt to 
distinguish good from evil (come to years of discretion, as 
we say), he shall be sharing the general prosperity — the 

* Ewald, whose sympathy with the spirit of the Hebrew prophets gives 
great weight to his authority on such a point, says, on this passage, that 
any explanation of it which does not recognize that it speaks of the coming 
Messiah is false. 

The Dean of Westminster quotes from Merivale's History of the Romans 
under the Empire fiii. 231) the following passage : — ' Scribonia was about to 
give a child to Octavius, Octavia to Antonius. Pollio had also two sons born 
nearly at the same time .... the near coincidence of all these distinguished 
births is connected with one of the most intricate questions of literary his- 
tory. In his fourth Eclogue, addressed to Pollio, Virgil celebrates the 
peace of Brundinium, and anticipates apparently the birth of a wondrous 
boy who shall restore the Saturnian age of gold .... We are impelled to 
inquire to whom among the most illustrious offspring of this auspicious age 
the poet's glowing language may be fitly referred .... After all their 
claims have been weighed and dismissed we are still at a loss for an object to 
whom, in the mind of the writer, the sublime vaticination can be consistently 
applied.' And Dr. Stanley then goes on to observe that 1 this might be 
said almost word for word of the difficulty of adjusting the claims of the 
children of Isaiah's time — whether his own or prince Hezekiah — with the 
exalted predictions of the Divine child in Isaiah vii. 14 — 20; ix. 6, 7.' — 
Lectures on the Jewish Church, ii. 461. 

f See further, below, pp. 114, 116. 



no ISAIAH VII. 17 — 25. NEW CALAMITIES. 



old proverbial blessing* — of his native land, which before 
then shall have seen the land of her present invaders — 
spoken of as one, because its kings were confederate — 
itself laid waste, after having first lost both those kings. 
In about three years from this time, Tiglath-Pileser over- 
threw the kingdom of Syria, killed Rezin, carried away the 
Damascenes and Syrians into Assyria and Media ;f took 
several cities in the north of Israel, and carried away the 
people of that part of the kingdom ; and Pekah's own 
assassination by Hoshea followed this devastation of his 
country. + 

Isaiah has hardly uttered the promise of deliverance 
and restored prosperity, when he follows it by the pre- 
diction of a still greater calamity. Abrupt as is the 
beginning of verse 1 7 it seems to be rightly connected by 
the Masoretic punctuation with the verses which precede it 
rather than with those which follow. The national sins of 
Ahaz and his people, hardly less grievous than those of the 
Ten Tribes whose captivity he is predicting, come back upon 
the prophet ; and he goes on to foretell the beginning of 
calamities such as the nation had never yet known since 
Ephraim fell away from it, — where the allusion to Ephraim 
indicates the link in the prophet's mind between verses 
16 and 17. With the exception of the temporary sub- 
jection of Rehoboam to Egypt, Judah had hitherto pre- 
served its national independence : but from this application 
of Ahaz to Tiglath-Pileser was to date ' its transition to a 
servile state from which,' observes Dr. Alexander, c it was 
never permanently freed, the domination of Assyria being 
soon succeeded by that of Egypt, and this by that of 
Babylon, Persia, Syria, and Rome, the last ending only in 
the downfall of the state, and that general dispersion which 
continues to this day. The revolt of Hezekiah, and even 
longer intervals of liberty in later times, are mere inter- 
ruptions of the customary and prevailing bondage.' 

Bees did, and still do, abound in Assyria, and flies in 
Egypt ; and it does not seem a mere fancy of the com- 
mentators, who see a propriety of allusion to the fierceness 

* Deut. xxvi. 9 ; Josh. v. 6. f 2 Kings xvi. 9. 

% 2 Kings xv. 29, 30. 



ISAIAH NOT A MAGICIAN. 



1 1 1 



and stings of the one, and the filth, buzzing, and com- 
parative feebleness of the other.* And these invading 
armies shall swarm over the whole land, covering the hill 
sides up to their rocky summits as well as the pastures of 
the lowlands : nothing shall escape them till the whole is 
waste and bare. The books of Kings and Chronicles say 
nothing of any intercourse, friendly or hostile, of Judah 
with Egypt in the reign of Ahaz ; but as an alliance with 
this kingdom was a part of the policy of the statesmen 
of Hezekiah a few years later, it may have been under 
discussion now, as an alternative to an application to 
Tiglath-Pileser. And, as has been already observed, the 
like alliances with Egypt had probably already begun on 
the part of Ephraim : and that an advance of the Assyrians 
from the north should bring on a corresponding movement 
of Egypt from the south, and that they should find a 
battle-field in Judsea, might seem likely enough, to the 
far-seeing prophet. But if the Egyptians did not appear 
as he expected, and the land of Judah was harassed, 
plundered and overrun by the Assyrian's armies and the 
collectors of his tribute alone, in this and the next reigns, 
this will not appear to detract from the substantial accuracy 
of Isaiah's words, if we have once cleared our minds of the 
superstitious and profane notion that he was a sort of 
magician and soothsayer, and employed by God as such ; 
and can realize that he was a man of like heart and mind 
with ourselves, — •truly sent from God, yet not more truly 
than each of us must be if he is to do any work, not 
worse than useless in the world. We may hold this belief 
all the more consistently for believing also that the work 
of the prophets, and of the other Scripture writers, was 
different from that of any men before or since : — £ If the 
whole body were an eye, where were the hearing ? ' 

* 'Hire Wvea &<si fieXicrvdujv ddivdojv, 

7rirpr]Q s/c yXa<pvprjg aid vkov ipxofxtvdiiiV 
fiorpvdbv de rctTovrai S7r' dvdeaiv eiapivolaiv, 
ai fisv t tvQa aXig Tre-Korr\arai, ai d& re evQa' 
S)Q Tuiv 'iQvea iroXXd veu>v airo Kai kXkjiclojv, k.t.X. 

Horn. II. (3, 87. 

'Wore fividojv adivaojv 'iQvea 7roXXd, 
aire Kara araQubv Trcifxvi]iov r/XaGKovcriv, 
u>oy iv eiapivy, ort re yXdyog dyyea devei' k.t.X. 

Ibid. 469. 



112 



THE ASSYRIAN RAZOR. 



Ahaz intended to 'hire' the Assyrian razor* for his 
own purposes ; but Jehovah would employ the same 
instrument to execute his judgments ; and in the conse- 
quent desoktions of the land, that prophecy of the child 
eating milk and honey would indeed be fulfilled, but after 
another manner than its terms seemed at first to imply. 
If they had believed and trusted in Jehovah for deliverance, 
they should have continued to eat the fat of the land ; but 
now the cultivated fields shall be laid waste, and their cul- 
tivators scattered by the sword or famine. Here and 
there a surviving inhabitant, w 7 ho has saved a young cow 
and two sheep from the wreck of his property shall feed 
upon the butter and milk they yield him, in an abundance 
which but mocks the general desolation : for the hill-sides, 
heretofore so carefully terraced and worked by man's hand, 
and in which the well-stocked vineyards once bore such a 
high price, are turned into mere briers and thorns, where 
men go with arrows and with bows, to seek wild game or 
to protect themselves from savage beasts or more savage 
men, or at best turn them into pasture-grounds for their 
cattle, since they are so overgrown with briers and thorns 
that it is useless to go there for the purpose of cultivating 
them again. The shekel of silver was probably equal to 
about two shillings of English money. The German vine- 
yards are valued at so much a vine, and among them the 
vines of Johannisburg at a ducat each, according to J. D. 
Michaelis : those of Lebanon were rated at a piastre each 
in 1811, according to Burckhardt. If therefore it is 
meant in the text that each vine was worth a shekel, this 
high price must imply that they were of the choicest 
kinds. But a comparison with Canticles viii. 11, 12, 
might lead us to suppose the reference here also to the 
rent rather than the price. 

* Knobel quotes 1 Kusseh-Bagh, the hill without a beard ;' 'opog KSKOfirjuivov 
vXrj,' Callim. Dian. 41. ' Humus comans,' Stat. Theb. 5, 202. ' Vnidantibus 
comis ceesariata terra," Apulci. de mundo, p. 268. 



CHAPTER VII. 



ISAIAH VIII. — IX. 7. THE SYMBOLICAL FAMILY. — ANCIENT AND MODERN HABITS 
OF PUBLIC MEN. — SILOAH AND EUPHRATES. — THE PANIC OF JUDAH, AND 
ITS REMEDY. — GALILEE OF THE GENTILES. — THE NATIONAL GLOOM. — THE 
GREAT LIGHT. — THE MESSIAH. — GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROPHET'S 
ANTICIPATIONS. 

WE have seen how Isaiah, during his late interview with 
Ahaz, was possessed by the idea of a child of his 
being a sign to the people of their deliverance from present 
invasion. In the first chapter of Hosea occurs a like 
instance of symbolic names given by a prophet to his 
children, and in Habakkuk ii. 2, we have mention of the 
practice of writing a prophecy on a tablet in easily legible 
characters, and hanging it up in the temple, market-place, 
or other public resort. And most modern commentators 
prefer to think that Isaiah now merely inscribed ' Haste 
Plunder, Speed Spoil' in large letters on a metal or 
waxed tablet, the b which the Authorized Version trans- 
lates ' concerning,' being the Lamed inscriptionis, as in 
Jerem. xlix. 1, 7, 23, 28; Ezek. xxxvii. 16; — though it 
may be observed that the direction to ' tie up and seal 
the testimony,' in verse 16, is in favour of the older 
version, which understands him to have made a record of 
his expectation of the birth of the child, and of the signifi- 
cance of that birth, at some length. He wrote ' with a 
man's pen,' or ' style,' — a phrase not unlike our ' common 
hand,' or ' popular style;' and he took as credible witnesses 
that the record had preceded the event, Uriah the high 
priest at the time,* and Zechariah, who was not improbably 
the father-in-law of Ahaz and a Levite.f He calls his 
wife ( the prophetess,' as the wife of a king is called a 

* 2 Kings xvi. 10. t 2 Kings xviii. 2 ; 2 Chron. xxix. 1, 13. 

I 



ii + ISAIAH VIII. i — 6. SYMBOLIC ACTS. 



queen (says Vitringa) though she does not reign, and 
in some old ecclesiastical canons the wife of a bishop 
' episcopa,' and of a presbyter ' presbytera ; ' and he thus 
claims for her a place with her husband and children"* in 
the holy and symbolic family who are for 'a sign in 
Israel.' She gave birth to a child, and his name was 
called, in accordance with the writing, 1 Haste-plunder, 
Speed-spoil,' that the people might understand that before 
he was old enough to utter the words ' father ' and 
' mother,' — that is, within a short but somewhat indefinite 
period such as we should express by 'in a year or two 
from his birth,' — the spoils of the plundered cities of 
Samaria and Damascus, the capitals of the nations now 
invading Judah, shall have been carried before the Assyrian 
conqueror in triumph. 

In order to realize the practical impressiveness of such 
symbolic acts and names upon Isaiah's contemporaries, we 
must remember that Jerusalem was a very small town for 
size and population compared with the notion we insensibly 
get of a capital from our own vast London ; and also that 
there was as little in the ways of thinking and living of 
that age and country as in the extent of the city to effect 
such a separation between a public man's political and 
personal life as exists in England. We respect the domestic 
reserve of our neighbours, and we fortify ourselves in the 
like reserve, by our habit of learning what they are doing 
that concerns us through the newspaper which we read by 
our own fireside. With no newspapers, and a climate which 
encouraged an out-of-door life, the people of Jerusalem 
would become as familiar with that personal demeanour of 
Isaiah in the market-place or elsewhere which he made a 
part of his public ministry, as we are with the mental 
habits and political conduct of Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Dis- 
raeli, though the greater part of us would recognize neither 
of them by sight, and still fewer know anything of their 
personal and private life. 

After having uttered this prediction, and perhaps after 
an interval of time in which the political relations of the 
several states had become further developed, Isaiah pro- 

* See verse 18 of this chapter. 



SILO AH AND EUPHRATES. 



ceeds to take a view of the whole Hebrew people, whom 
he looks on as one, notwithstanding the actual division 
and enmity of the two kingdoms. He sees Ephraim re- 
joicing, and Judah trembling, at the alliance of Rezin and 
Pekah ; the one expecting that it will lead to the over- 
throw of the feeble house of David, the other admitting 
that their own monarchy was contemptible in comparison 
with the power of their enemies, and looking to Assyria 
as the only protection against that overthrow ; but both 
agreeing in this, that their politics are wholly worldly, and 
have no reference to the government and help of the Lord 
of hosts, the true King of the whole Hebrew people, as 
indeed of the other nations from whom they hope or fear 
so much. The visible power of armies was to them far 
more real than the unseen help of Jehovah which the 
prophet believed and asserted to be sufficient for those 
who would put their trust in him and his covenant with 
the nation. The little brook of Siloah* might ' make 
glad the city of God' with its living and never-failing 
stream ; but what was it in their eyes compared with the 
mighty river Euphrates, which, when it was swollen with 
the melted snows of Armenia — resembling the great king 
who recruited his countless armies in the like mountainous 
regions — yearly overflowed its banks, and covered the 
whole plain with its waters ! Therefore, says Isaiah, this 
great river — this king of Assyria with all his hosts — shall 
Jehovah bring upon this people and land. After breaking 

* Under the south-west hrow of Ophel, which is itself the south-eastern 
of the hills which form the site of Jerusalem, there are two pools of Siloam, 
or Siloah (now Silwan), the larger of which, now nearly filled up, Captain 
Wilson supposes to he the pool dug by Hezekiah. These pools are supplied 
by a conduit tunnelled through Ophel, from an intermitting spring in the 
Kedron valley now called the ' Fountain of the Virgin ; ' and from the 
name, as well as because the extensive artificial provisions of cisterns, pools, 
and aqueducts, and the formation of the ground makes it doubtful whether 
there existed any other natural spring in or near Jerusalem, we may con- 
clude that this was the living fountain, the ' softly flowing ' waters of which 
1 made glad the city of God ; ' while the complicated channels through 
which it still passes under ground were probably among those works of 
military engineering which Hezekiah executed (2 Chron. xxxii. 3, 4; Eccles. 
xlviii. 17). The saying ascribed to Mahomet, that ' Zemzem (in Mecca) and 
Siloah are the two fountains of Paradise,' is worth quoting here. See 
Bobinson's Biblical Researches, i. 493, ff ; Gesenius, Commentar. i. 276 ; 
Kitto's Physical Geography, p. 411, ff. ; Fergusson's Topography of Jerusalem, 
p. 69, ff. ; Wilson and Warren's Recovery of Jerusalem, pp. 19, 233, ff. ; and. 
on Isaiah xxii. below. 

i 2 



n6 ISAIAH VII 7— 16. THE PANIC, 



over Syria and Samaria, as successive dikes which hardly 
for a moment delay its course, it shall pass on to Judaea, 
filling the land with its floods, till the monarchy and the 
nation it represents shall be reduced to the near peril of a 
drowning man, whose neck the waters have reached : — 
' And the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth 
of thy land, 0 Immanuel ! ' — ' thy land shall be thus 
overflowed, 0 child, whom, notwithstanding Jehovah has 
set as a sign that he is present with us : therefore, however 
the deep waters may go over us, we will still trust in that 
Lord, and in the promise of which thou art the standing 
witness.'* The name Immanuel here evidently refers 
back to the promise in chapter vii. v. 1 4 ; but whether it 
is, both there and here, altogether an ideal name for the 
Messiah, or whether it was given to a child of Isaiah 
born the year before Maher-shalal-hash-baz, or whether it 
was another name for this last (all which explanations 
have been proposed) we have no sufficient evidence to 
determine. The word ' wings ' either refers, by a change 
of metaphor, to the wings of an army, or it may mean the 
extreme sides of the overflowing river. 

Trusting in this Name, Isaiah defies the confederacy 
of Ephraim and Syria, and the power of Assyria : their 
alliances, their warlike array, shall be broken ; their counsels 
shall prove foolish ; their resolutions and orders shall fail 
of execution ; — ' for God is with us.' The exact force of 
the original can be apprehended by the English reader, 
though it can only be expressed — and that somewhat im- 
perfectly — by the translation of the word ' Immanuel ' 
here, and its retention above. 

There was a general panic among the people ; ' their 
heart was moved as the trees of the wood are moved by 
the wind,' when they heard that Syria was confederate 
with Ephraim ; their cry was every where, ' a confederacy! 

* 'Ac si dixisset, terra nihilominus erit tua, O Immanuel.' — Calvin, 
quoted by Alexander. 

f There is no difficulty from the original usually meaning a treasonable 
plot. Judah might reasonably apply such a term to an alliance of Israel 
with heathens against her, even if the feeling with which a nation must look 
on any alliance for its destruction would not justify such an expression. 
The word, expressive of alarm, is that translated ' Treason ' in 2 Chron. 
xxiii. 13. 



AND ITS REMEDY. 



has been made against us, and we must meet it by a 
counter alliance with Assyria ; ' and the prophet says that 
he too should have fallen under the influence of this 
panic, if Jehovah had not laid hold of him with a strong 
hand, to keep him in the way of dependence on himself, 
and if he had not taught him to escape the fear which 
possessed his countrymen, by making the Lord of hosts 
his fear, and his dread, by sanctifying him himself, as he 
now in his name calls on them to do. To sanctify Jehovah* 
is in mind and in practice to recognize him as the holy 
God, the Lord who is absolute (absolutus), free from the 
limitations which hinder all other beings from carrying 
their wills into full operation ; and to believe with the 
whole heart that God can and does govern all things 
according to the counsel of his own will, and that what he 
determines does certainly come to pass, however proba- 
bilities and appearances may be against the belief. To the 
nation which thus sanctifies Jehovah, he (says Isaiah) will 
be their sanctuary — their protection against all their 
enemies. Such was his original covenant with both the 
Houses of Israel, and it still holds good. If, therefore, 
they will break and renounce it, it becomes a stumbling- 
block to them. When their statesmen endeavour to remedy 
present mischief and secure future prosperity by craftily 
playing off against one another the nations whom they 
cannot hope to match by force, they are attempting to go 
counter to the whole plan of Jehovah's government, and 
they will do it only to their own confusion. The greater 
part of ' both the houses of Israel' will refuse to listen ; 
but Isaiah calls on the small remnant of his faithful 
hearers and followers to wait with him patiently during 
the present calamities, and to believe that Jehovah does 
but hide his face for a time. Eeferring to the declaration 
— the ' testimony,' or deposition — which he had lately put 
on record in the presence of witnesses whom he now 
indicates by the word ' disciples,' he reminds them that 
the covenant and promise are but closed and sealedt with 

* Compare Numbers xx. 12 ; Deut. xxxii. 51 ; Isaiah xxix. 23. 
f Compare Isaiah xxix. 11 ; Daniel xii. 4, 9. Also Deut. vi. 8, xi. 18 ; 
Prov. vi. 20, 21, vii. 2, 3. 



n8 ISAIAH VIII. ij.—IX. i. THE SOOTHSAYERS. 



a more formal ratification by the delay in their fulfilment ; 
and that his words and acts and name/" and the 
children, — Shear-jashub (Immanuel), — Maher-shalal-hash- 
haz, — whom God has given him, are meanwhile his 
signs and pledges to them of the reality of that ratifica- 
tion. This people will continue their habit (from the 
days of Saul and earlier) of going to wizards and sorcerers, 
that they may raise spirits from the dead to tell them 
what to do in times of political difficulty like the present ; 
but the faithful must reply, when called on to join with 
them, that it is not of the dead, nor of the sorcerers, 
who with their ventriloquism t seem to receive direc- 
tions from the shrill voices of familiar spirits, that men 
should inquire, but of the living God, and of the prophets 
who declare his will in words of reason and righteousness. 
Let the people, let Ahaz and his counsellors, refer to God's 
law and covenant, and to the promises, based thereon, 
which the prophet has even now been commissioned to 
deliver ; if they refuse to do so, there is no dawn of light 
in the darkness of their souls. They have chosen darkness, 
and shall suffer the consequences till in despair they curse 
their king and their God, as they lift their eyes to him in 
vain, and are driven back again into the night of gathering 
calamities. 

So completely does Isaiah identify the two kingdoms of 
Israel as one people on the present occasion, that as the 
image of this darkness gathers itself around him he con- 
templates it not as in the land of Judah but in the north 
of Israel, in that border-land and debatable ground of 
Galilee which was politically and religiously debased by the 
intermixture of Canaanitish tribes with the Hebrews ; + the 
chief cities of which neither Solomon cared to retain nor 
Hiram to accept ; § which lay open to the first brunt of 
every northern invasion ; and which was actually wasted 
and its inhabitants carried away by Tiglath-Pileser shortly 
after the date of this prophecy. II And some of these very 

* Isaiah means ' Salvation of Jehovah.' 

f The Septuagint translates ' them that have familiar spirits ' hy lyya- 
(TTpi/jivOoL. 'Peep' is pipiunt, the 'squeak and gibber' of Shakspeare. — 
Hamlet, i. 1. 

% Judges i. 30—35. § 1 Kings ix. 11—13. || 2 Kings xv. 29. 



LITERAL COMMENTATORS. 



119 



people ' of Asher, and Manasseh, and Zebulon,' "'' r attended 
the summons of Hezekiah a few years after, and gave a 
practical recognition of the unity of Israel by coming up 
to Jerusalem to the passover. This fact is interesting in 
itself and in its reference to the passage before us, and 
also as raising the question whether Isaiah or his disciples 
may have taken any steps for the actual promulgation of 
this prophecy in those districts, and thus by their preaching 
have prepared the way for its fulfilment : — a supposition 
which is not improbable, considering how important, wide- 
spread, and active a body the prophets were, and how much 
evidence there is both in Hebrew history, and in their 
writings, of their extensive personal acquaintance with 
every neighbouring country and people. And then we may 
pass to another fulfilment of this prophecy, in that day 
when, on that same sea-coast of Tiberias, and in the city of 
Capernaum, was heard the voice of a greater prophet than 
Isaiah, preaching and saying ' Repent, for the kingdom of 
heaven' — a greater kingdom than that of Hezekiah — ' is 
at hand.' t 

Those commentators who protest against our seeing any 
reference in this glorious vision to the times of Isaiah lest 
we should disparage its fulfilment by the coming of Christ, 
— and their opponents who forbid us to view it in the 
light of the gospel lest we should overlook the fact that 
Isaiah and Hezekiah were men of flesh and blood, like 
ourselves, — both err by a too exclusive literalness, and 
preference of inferior logic for philosophic insight. Why 
should Hebrew history alone depart from the law of all 
other histories, that the earlier events must be read in the 
light of the later, which are their necessary developments ? 
Why should prophecy be honoured by making it out to be 
a mere verbal soothsaying ? The student of the Hebrew 
prophets who dreads neither of these bugbears, but sees 
and reflects for himself, will find that reason and faith are 
in harmony, and that neither can be rightly possessed to 
the exclusion or neglect of the other. If the English poet 
of the nineteenth century, whom I have already quoted, 
claims ' a vision and a faculty divine 5 for his readers as 

* 2 Chron. xxx. 1—11. f Matt. iv. 12—25. 



120 ISAIAH IX. 2—7. GLOOM, AND LIGHT. 



well as himself, we need not hesitate to recognize a like 
power in ourselves for the better understanding Isaiah in 
those parts of his discourses where, as here, he is so 
markedly carried out of himself. He sees the thick 
darkoess, spiritual and temporal, which was gathering over 
the land, and which reached its height when the nation 
had generally lapsed into heathenism, and Ahaz their king 
had shut up the temple and substituted the worship of 
false gods even to the sacrifice of his own son to Moloch ; 
and when Ephraim had called in a heathen power to enable 
it to effect its fratricidal designs against Judah, and Judah 
had retaliated by summoning another still stronger heathen 
nation ; and the whole land, over which David and Solomon 
had once reigned gloriously, lay wasted by the sword, and 
tributary to the Assyrian, because abandoned by Jehovah, 
whom they had first abandoned. The people walk in 
darkness, nay dwell in the shadow of death ! But a great 
light breaks upon the gloom : multitudes, full of joy and 
gladness, throng the cities and the fields which just now 
were deserted ; he hears the shouts of the harvest-home, 
while they present the first-fruits to Jehovah ;* he sees 
the triumphal procession going up to the temple with the 
spoils of victory,t and the armour and the blood-stained 
cloaks of the warriors gathered to be burnt, since perma- 
nent peace is established in the land : he knows that they 
who sowed in tears have reaped in joy, and that the King 
has come to the rescue of his people ; that the yoke of the 
despot, and the rod of the slave-master are broken ; and 
that a deliverance is effected greater even than that ancient 
deliverance of Israel from their seven years' bondage, on 
the night when ' the Midianites and the Amalekites and 
all the children of the east lay along in the valley' (of 
Jezreel, in this same Galilee of the Gentiles), ' like grass- 
hoppers, and their camels without number, as the sand of 
the sea-side for multitude,' but ' ran, and cried, and fled,' 
when the three hundred raised their battle-shout, ' The 
sword of Jehovah and of Gideon :"+ and then he recalls 

* Deut. xii. 11, 12 ; xvi. 1 1—15 ; Psalm iv. 7. 

f Compare 1 Chron. xviii. 11 ; 2 Chron. xx. 27, 28. 

I Judges 



' UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN: 



121 



the actual debasement under Ahaz, and answers the ques- 
tion which his disciples must have asked him, and he 
must have asked himself, and his God — how this vision 
and its promises can be true ? And the sense, in modern 
prose, of the mighty words of the prophetic reply, when 
we have somewhat unravelled the many thoughts and 
images which are gathered up into each word, seems to 
be this, — that the believing Israelites are to know that 
Isaiah's children, and especially the one with whom, in a 
moment of special inspiration he has connected the name 
of Immanuel, are signs and pledges that God has not 
forgotten his covenant nor his ancient promises of a 
Saviour — the seed of the woman, and the seed of Abra- 
ham and David — in whom all nations should be blessed ; 
that this child is a witness that Jehovah the invisible 
King is now actually among them, notwithstanding the 
iniquity of both prince and people ; and that he will ere 
long manifest his presence and power by restoring the 
kingdom from its ruinous condition, in the person of a 
royal deliverer, a Messiah, of the line of David. * And, as 
Jacob conferred the birthright and blessing of his race 
upon the sons of Joseph by saying, ' Let my name be 
named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and 
Isaac t or as the children of Israel in the wilderness 
were warned to obey the angel who went before them, 
because the ' name of Jehovah was in him ;' so the Name 
of God, wonderful in counsel, mighty in work, the Father 
of their fathers and of their children for a thousand gene- 
rations, the eternal Upholder of their race and their nation 
and of its prosperity and peace, shall be named upon, shall, 
be in, this anointed saviour, on whose shoulder the govern- 
ment shall rest. % The eternal kingdom already lies about 
them, though they deny and reject it ; it has its founda- 
tions in the unchangeable purpose of God, and not in the 
good or evil dispositions of this or that king and his 

* To those for whom music not only 1 charms the sense,' but also embodies 
thoughts and feelings too deep for words, Handel's 'Messiah' is no mean 
comment on these prophecies. 

f Genesis xlviii. 16. 

% Knobel quotes 'Bene humeri's tuis sedet imperium:' Plin. Paneg.lO. 
' Rempublicam universam vestris humeris sustinetis : ' Cic pr. Flacc. 30. 



122 



IS THE 'CHILD' 



subjects ; and therefore, with no material hindrance from 
the one, nor help from the other, of these, the zeal of God 
himself will effectually carry forward the work, and spread 
this kingdom of righteousness and peace, without limit of 
time or place. Some commentators think 'mighty hero' 
a more accurate translation than ' mighty God,' as the 
word (bw) is used in such a sense in Ezekiel xxxi. 11, and 
xxxii. 21, in the former of which places it is applied to 
Nebuchadnezzar : but we know that the Old Testament 
does not scruple to 1 call them gods to whom the word 
of God came ;' and the other meaning seems the better, 
explaining it as I have here done. 

I need not repeat w T hat I have already said as to the 
difficulty of such a complete insight into the relative 
activity of the imagination and the logical faculties in the 
Hebrew prophets, and into the degree of deflniteness with 
which the expectation of a Messiah presented itself to 
Isaiah and his contemporaries, as would authorize a posi- 
tive opinion how far the prophet, in uttering the words 
before us, was thinking of his own times and circum- 
stances, or looking beyond them. Yet I am unable to 
form any distinct notion of Isaiah as a man and a Hebrew, 
and as a prophet of Jehovah in contrast with those mutter- 
ing wizards he denounces, without supposing that, at this 
period of his life and ministry, he must have connected 
the thought of ' the Child ' with Hezekiah, on whom the 
name of the mighty God had been actually named,"* and 
who (being now a boy nine or ten years old) may already 
have given promise of the piety which afterwards distin- 
guished him : — and that he would not, at this time, have 
considered that his prediction would be quite inadequately 
realized if the youthful prince should, on his accession to 
the throne of David and Solomon, renew the glories of 
their reigns, in which peace and justice were established at 
home and abroad, through trust in Jehovah and his cove- 
nant : — reigns of which the historical facts must be studied 
in the light which the Book of Psalms, and such passages 
as 2 Chronicles ix. 1 — 8, throw on them. I say at this 
time, because we shall have occasion to inquire what was 

* Hezekiah means ' Jehovah strengthens.' 



HEZEKIAH ? 



the effect on Isaiah's mind when he did see a restoration 
under Hezekiah of such a reign of righteousness and pros- 
perity ; and whether his expectation of the Messiah did 
not eventually assume a very different form from what 
could have been possible to him at the time we now speak 
of. There is a method through this whole book of Isaiah's 
prophecies which reflects a corresponding progress in the 
prophet's own mind ; and this method offers us a clue 
through difficulties which are otherwise impassable, if we 
will only hold it fast and follow its guidance fairly. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



ISAIAH IX. 8. — XII. — EPIC UNITY. — OBSTINATE ENERGY OF THE HEBREW RACE. — 
LAWLESSNESS OF THE TEN TRIBES. — LEGALISM OF JUDAH. — THE KING OF 
ASSYRIA. — GODS IN THE IMAGE OF MEN. — THE SCOURGE OF NATIONS, AND 

ITS WIELDER. ANCIENT ROADS. — THE KING OF THE STOCK OF JESSE. 

THE GOLDEN AGE. — FUSION OF CONFLICTING ELEMENTS IN A NATION. — 

CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLT OF EPHRAIM. DEPORTATION OF JEWS IN 

ISAIAH'S TIME. — THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH — ITS RELATION TO THE WORLD. 
THE WATER OF SALVATION. 

f"pHE strophical arrangement of Isaiah ix. 8 to x. 4, is 
-L supposed by many commentators to mark it for a 
distinct prophecy, delivered soon after the last; while they 
see in the allusion to Samaria, as actually taken by the 
Assyrians (chap. x. 10), proof that the following prophecy 
from x. 5, to the end of chapter xii. cannot date earlier 
than the sixth year of Hezekiah. But these arguments 
are not conclusive. There is no reason why a style of 
discourse in which historical narrative, political oratory, 
and poetical rhythm as well as imagery, are equally in 
place, should not embody in itself a refrain several times 
repeated and then dropped, just as in other instances we 
find it containing a song or psalm.* Nor is it impossible 
to explain, by the ordinary prophetic usage of the past 
for the future, a reference to the taking of Samaria not 
more, though not less, definite than many other prophetic 
descriptions which were undoubtedly made before the 
event. On the other hand, we have the probability of a 
general adherence to chronological order in the actual 
arrangement of the book, the indications of an unbroken 

* Chap. xxvi. 1, xxvii. 2 ; and compare the repetition in Amos i. and ii. 
The recurrence of this refrain in verse 25 of chapter v. seems to me no suffi- 
cient reason for supposing that this passage has been severed from the earlier 
prophecy. I cannot think that it is necessary even to alter the Masoretic 
divisions in order to make the refrain finish each period. 



EPIC UNITY OF ISAIAH. 



current of thought,* the unity of subject of the whole 
portion, chapters vii. to xii. inclusive, and, lastly, the pro- 
bability of which I believe the reader will see more evidence 
the longer he considers the subject, that here as through- 
out the book the author's own hand may have been at 
work, arranging, retouching, and fusing together the 
records of discourses originally distinct. These chapters 
form a kind of epic whole (itself a part of a still larger 
whole), in which the internecine enmities of the Ten Tribes 
among themselves and with Judah, and the alliances with 
the heathen nations by which they support these enmities, 
only to involve themselves in the common ruin, are traced 
to their first causes, and the loss of national unity and free- 
dom shown to be the consequence of the loss of that spiritual 
unity and liberty which can only spring from and be sus- 
tained by the living faith of king and people in the unseen 
but present Lord of the nation and of each member of it : 
subjection to the heathenish, godless Assyrian power, is 
shown to be the proper and effectual punishment of the 
national sin : and a restoration in and through the reign 
of a righteous prince of the line of David is declared to be 
certain, because God himself is pledged to it by a covenant 
which men's evil doings cannot cancel. The prophet 
stands as on a hill or tower, and sees the past and the 
future, the distant and the near, in one completed whole 
in which all events and all wills have but subserved the 
almighty Master -will ; and, therefore, we find here an 
instance of the propriety of the word epic, which has with 
so much force been applied to the writings of the Hebrew 
prophets generally by Mr. Maurice.t In the second edition 
of the work referred to, this author has indeed omitted 
this and much more of formal comparison between the 
Hebrew and classical types of literature, apparently lest 
his readers should mistake a vital relation for a technical 
correspondence, and fall into the bondage to names into 
which that mistake always brings us. But if we take 

* As in verses 24 — 26, of chapter x., 'compared with chapter viii. 8 — 
10 ; x. 6 with viii. 1,4; x. 27 with ix. 3 ; x. 21 with vii. 3 (Shear-jashub) ; 
xi. 1—5 with ix. 6, 7 ; and xi. 13, 14 with ix. 12, 20, 21. 

t Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, 1st edition. See also Educational 
Magazine, vol. ii. p. 226. 



i26 ISAIAH IX. 8—16. DESTRUCTION 



care how we call the prophets ' epic poets,' and then 
fancy we understand them, we shall find a real light thrown 
on the subject by this word, which is farther explained by 
Coleridge's observation that epic and dramatic poetry are 
alike founded on the relation of Providence to the human 
will ; but that while in the latter the will is exhibited as 
struggling with fate, in the former a pre-announced fate 
(or Providence) gradually adjusts and employs the will 
and the events as the instruments for accomplishing its 
designs : — Aids le TeXelero jSotAi/.* 

The] Jewish historian, in relating the fall of Samarin, 
as the punishment of national sin, says, 'Yet Jehovah 
testified against Israel and against Judah, by all the pro- 
phets and all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil 
ways, and keep my commandments and statutes, according 
to the law which I commanded your fathers and which I 
sent to you by my servants the prophets. 't And here we 
have one of these repeated warnings, in this ' word which 
Jehovah sent unto Jacob,' by Isaiah. The Ten Tribes 
had already suffered many an infliction ; their political 
organization had often been broken up by civil wars and 
foreign invasions, as the house of unburnt brick dis- 
solves into mud before the rain ; and the flower of the 
people had been cut down as lavishly as men cut down 
the cheap sycamores : but with that stoutness of heart, 
that obstinate toughness which in all ages to the present 
has marked this race, the men of Ephraim and Samaria 
seem to rise superior to every calamity ; like Solomon, + 
they will change the sycamores for cedars, and they will 
replace the bricks with hewn stones. The conversion of 
Damascus from an ancient enemy to an ally encourages 
them in their hopes ; but Jehovah will confound their 
policy by bringing the conquerors of Damascus upon them. 

The histories mention inroads of the Philistines into 
Judah, though not into Israel, at this period ; but we can 
believe the latter did not escape, as these marauders were 
not likely to miss an opportunity, especially when once in 
movement. The ' Syrians ' are either the same allies whose 

* Literary Remains, vol. ii. pp. 159, 164. 
f 2 Kings xvii. 13. X 1 Kings x. 27. 



OF THE TEN TRIBES. 



127 



arms, on their becoming tributary to Tiglath-Pileser, would 
at once be turned against Ephraim ; or the word (Aram) 
may be used in a sense wide enough to include the As- 
syrians themselves. Tiglath-Pileser took Damascus, killed 
Rezin, and carried the people away captive ; and we find 
Ahaz going there to meet the Assyrian, when it is related 
that he took the pattern of an altar at Damascus, and 
adopted the gods of Syria, 'because they helped them,' 
an account which can only be applicable to the gods of 
Tiglath-Pileser. * 

' The people turneth not unto him that smiteth them,' 
and therefore they shall be smitten again and again. It 
will not be a mere political change of an Assyrian satrap 
for an Israelite king, but every rank, every household from 
the highest to the lowest, shall suffer : — though youth is 
the season of joy, the young men shall find that it is not 
so when Jehovah, the source of joy, has no joy in them ; 
though mercy and pity are the natural right of the 
fatherless and widow, they shall find that God himself 
refuses them these ; and the reason is, that all of them, 
man, woman, and child, are demoralized and corrupted ; 
one may be a hypocrite, and another an open sinner, but 
all speak, because their hearts believe, the language of that 
folly which is contrary to, and which denies and excludes, 
the knowledge of God. That in the middle of this threaten- 
ing of universal calamity upon head and tail, palm-tree 
and rush, we should find an explanation that the ' tail ' is 
the prophet that teacheth lies, and not the common people, 
as the context demands, does not require the supposition 
of an interpolation by a later hand, as some say. We have 
constant occasion to notice the Hebrew disregard of that 
mere logical balance of sentences which indeed soon be- 
comes an intolerable pedantry in any other language: and 
here Isaiah's knowledge of what the teachers of a people 
ought to be and might be, and of how great is their 
personal responsibility, stops him before he can complete 
the explanation of the tail and the rush, and he turns it 
as though he had said, ' No, the common people are brutal 

* 2 Kings xvi. ; 2 Chron. xxviii. See too the use of 'Aram' in Isaiah 
xxxvii. 11. 



128 ISAIAH IX. ij.—X. 4. ANARCHY. 



and degraded enough, but the men who have been the 
cause of this debasement are more guilty, and more con- 
temptible than they : they are the dregs of all/ 

Civil war and foreign invasion shall rage through this 
reprobate people like the fire with which the husbandman 
clears the ground of briers and thorns. The wickedness of 
the land becomes its own punishment, and burns with a 
fury which is indeed the wrath of God, while its fuel is the 
j)eople themselves. The images of slaughter and fire — at 
once fact and symbol — suggest that of famine so desperate 
that ' no man shall spare his brother,' nay ' they shall eat 
every one the flesh of his own arm.' Ephraim and Manasseh 
were brethren, and sons of the same mother, but they 
appear as rivals in the earliest records ;* and their names 
seem to be here put to represent the factions which made 
the history of the kingdom of Israel in great part a history 
of tyrannies, rebellions, and anarchies, which were gather- 
ing to their climax at this time, when the assassination of 
Pekah seems to have been followed by a nine years' inter- 
regnum and anarchy, as far as we can trace and make out 
the lines of a picture which is perhaps indistinct from the 
very confusion of the times. t And the prophet completes the 
description of this miserable war of brethren among them- 
selves by saying that they shall be together against Judah. 

The strophical form connects the following verses (x. 
1 — 4) with the preceding, as the exclamation with which 
they begin does with those that come after ; and in both are 
corresponding links of the subject itself. The prophet has 
described the sins of Ephraim in a general manner ; but 
on the mention of Judah he proceeds to denounce what 
we know from the whole tenour of his discourses he felt to 
be the worst form of the guilt of his own people, with a 
particularity which it is perhaps not fanciful to attribute 
to his thoughts being now directed homewards. The Ten 
Tribes were far more ferocious and anarchical than the 
men of Judah : there are many indications in the latter of 
that national respect for law which so characterizes the 

* Genesis xlviii. 13 — 20 ; Judges viii. 1 — 3, xii. 1 — 6. 
f Compare the historical accounts and dates, in 2 Kings xv. with Hosea 
vii. 7- 



ISAIAH X. 5 — 12. THE ASSYRIANS. 



English, that it has been observed,* that though history 
attributes to us our share in national wickedness, our 
crimes have almost always been committed under colour 
of law, and not by open violence, — as in the series of 
judicial murders in the reigns of Henry VIII., Charles II., 
and James II. And thus Isaiah, recurring to Judah, 
denounces the utmost severity of God's wrath in the day 
in which he, the righteous Judge, shall come to visit ' an 
hypocritical nation,' whose nobles and magistrates decree, 
and execute, unrighteous decrees, — ' To turn aside the 
needy from judgment, and to take away the right from 
the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and 
that they may rob the fatherless ! ' t They are satisfied 
that they are safe in their heartless selfishness, with peace 
at home and protection abroad restored by their statecraft 
and their alliance with Assyria. But while they thus 
rejoice at home, ' desolation cometh from far.' To whom 
will they fly for help when God has abandoned them ? 
Under whose protection will they leave their wealth, their 
dignities, their glory, which they have been heaping up 
for themselves ? Captivity or death are the only prospects 
before them. And yet, as though no judgments could 
sufficiently condemn and punish their utter wickedness, 
the prophet repeats, — 1 For all this his anger is not turned 
away, but his hand is stretched out still.' 

Where the evidence is so incomplete, and the arguments 
of learned commentators so nearly balanced, I do not 
dogmatize on the date of chapters x. xi. xii. ; but on the 
assumption which I have already preferred, that these 
chapters may be taken with the three preceding ones to 
form one prophecy, the scope of the portion before us will 
be this : — Isaiah turns from Ephraim and Judah to Assyria 
with an apparent abruptness which does but half conceal 
the real connection or rather unity of all the parts of his 
subject : ignoring the petty statecraft by which Ahaz and 
his counsellors were bringing Assyria upon themselves as 

* By Lord Campbell. 

f ' To reave the orphan of his patrimony, 

To wring- the widow from her custom'd right.' 

Second Tart of King Henry VI., v., 2. 
K 



i 3 o 



THE KING OF ASSYRIA. 



well as on their enemies, the prophet goes at once to the 
heart of the matter, and shows us Jehovah come to execute 
justice upon the nations, and the Assyrians as the rod and 
instrument of that justice ; and he employs the whole 
force of his imagination to do justice to ' the stout heart 
of the' king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks,' in 
order that he may give more emphasis to the scorn with 
which Jehovah, and the servants of Jehovah, look on his 
pretensions and power, and that he may bring into fuller 
contrast with this kingdom of the world, which Ahaz and 
his people make the sole object of their hopes and fears, 
that other kingdom which stands, and ever shall stand, in 
the will not of man but of God. The old Babel monarchy, 
which carried its traditions back to the days of Nimrod 
that mighty hunter before Jehovah, and was in all ages 
the very type of sheer, godless, arbitrary power, had, in 
the time of Isaiah and the generation before him, renewed 
its strength under the Assyrian kings, and become the 
terror and the scourge of all the neighbouring countries ; 
for the Loed of hosts, the Lord of the whole earth, had 
sent this northern conqueror forth, and ' given him a 
charge to take the spoil and to take the prey.' One 
nation after another had fallen before him ; his satraps sat 
in the thrones of their once independent kings ; the 
national gods of ancient kingdoms could not preserve their 
shrines nor their votaries from his hands ; Samaria might 
trust to her golden calves, but they were within his grasp ; 
and the cherubims of Jerusalem, or what other unseen 
images might be hidden and worshipped in her holy of 
holies, would soon prove equally powerless : — thus he 
boasted, little thinking that he was the merest tool in the 
hands of an unknown Master, who was exactly limiting his 
actions by the purposes for which he was being used. 
Calno, or Calneh, is probably the modern Neffer about 
sixty miles south-east of Babylon. Carchemish was on 
the Euphrates, and is supposed to have commanded its 
passage there.* It appears from the Assyrian Inscrip- 
tions to have been a chief city of the Hittites. Hamath, 
still existing as Hamah, on the Orontes, was the capital of 

* 2 Chron. xxxv. 20 ; Jerem. xlvi. 2. 



ASSYRIAN RELIGION. 



Upper Syria, and is mentioned frequently in Hebrew 
history as a place of importance. It also occurs in the 
Inscriptions. Arpad must have been in Syria, but its 
place is not known. 

' I took the cities, I gave them up to pillage, I slew 
the inhabitants ; ' or, c I devastated the country, I took 
away the king, with his priests and his gods, his warriors 
and his wives, his gold, silver, and cattle, I carried all the 
men and women into slavery, I brought there the people 
of other cities — such are the records which meet us 
every where in the newly-deciphered annals of these 
Assyrian kings, and such the subjects of the sculptures 
which ornamented their palaces. But the reference is also 
constant to the god in whose strength they have done 
these things, and whose worship they have thereby 
established every where : and it is interesting to notice 
the apparent one-sidedness with which Isaiah here and 
elsewhere omits all reference to this religious spirit of the 
conquerors, while his words are otherwise (except for the 
poetry) so exact a counterpart of the Assyrian phraseology. 
It is the one-sidedness of the practical man who goes 
straight to the single point on which all the rest really 
depends. The prophet who, without phrase of qualifica- 
tion, told the strictly religious Jews that the whole ritual 
which they were practising in exact conformity with the 
law, was an unbearable abomination,* would have asserted 
in equally plain terms that the religion of Assyria was no 
religion. * God, the living and true God, had revealed him- 
self to Isaiah, and to Isaiah's nation, as the Being in whose 
image man was created, and in whom therefore justice, 
honesty, truth, kindness, and every other properly human 
virtue which in man feebly struggled for existence, had its 
own perfect, absolute reality, without the limits or the 
defects of the finite. The Lord of man, the Jehovah, or I 
AM,f had made himself known to Isaiah as ' he had to 
Moses, and as he does still to each of us : and when the 
prophet turned to look at the ' gods of the nations ' he 
saw at once that they were something different — nay, 
exactly reverse, — in kind. On the one hand, God was the 

* Isaiah i. 11 — 14. f Exodus iii. 14. 

K 2 



GOD IN MAN'S IMAGE. 



prototype of man ; on the other, man of God. The God 
of the Assyrian was made in the image of the Assyrian, 
was the projected form of his own character. The spirit 
which was embodied in that dignified human figure with 
its eagle's head and wings, was but the spirit of the actual 
Tiglath Pileser or Sennacherib, with his wide and resistless 
swoop, his ravenous maw, his royal cruelty.* And when 
he led out that terrible cavalry, in the ranks of which 
there was no ungirt warrior, no unbent bow, no horse's 
hoof not hard as flint, and whose shout struck panic into 
all who heard it,t when he went forth to conquest at their 
head, from that palace and city of which we have not 
altogether to imagine the magnificence, we know that the 
winged lions and the human-headed bulls whom he took 
with him, full of fierce life, were but imperfectly repre- 
sented by those which he left behind, carved in stone, at 
the portals of his own house, or the house of his god. We 
may see from the vision in chapter vi., that the distinction 
between the two kinds of religion — that which God reveals 
to man, and that which man makes for himself — is not 
obliterated or enfeebled, but brought out more plainly, by 
the fact that the cherubims at Jerusalem were, in other 
respects, the counterparts of these sphinx-like creatures of 
the neighbouring nations : we see the same human ele- 
ment, the same religious sentiment, the same capacity for 
worship, the same human methods of expressing this senti- 
ment and capacity : the difference is between the nation, or 
the man, in whom this human element is met *by a real 
unveiling and communication of God himself, from above, 
and those in whom it is not so met, and who therefore 
substitute a projection of themselves for its independent 
existence. At the same time we must not, in our objec- 
tive study of the heathen world, overlook that we Chris- 
tians (like the Jews of old) do habitually combine much of 
this heathenish temper with the true faith which has been 
given us. This is plain if we look in any direction where 
the particular religious prejudice no longer blinds us. We 

* See the majestic figures who have captives flayed, or their eyes put out, 
in their presence ; as, for instance, Sennacherib at Lachish, in Layard's 
Nineveh and Babylon (1853), p. 150. Truly eagle-like men. 

f Isaiah v. 26—29. 



ISAIAH X. 13—27. TBI: GREAT KING. 



can see, for instance, how much of the harsh notions which 
Calvin and the Puritans mixed up (as we now perceive so 
unworthily) with their apprehensions of God, was the reflex 
of men's ordinary notions of justice, and of magisterial 
duty as well as right, in those days, and which did not 
shock them when attributed to God, because they held 
them, as of course, in all their worldly dealings. So, the 
new form which the 1 doctrine of election and reprobation ' 
took, in the religious revival of the last century, did but 
reflect the narrow class notions which took for granted 
that a gentleman was, and would be to the end of time, a 
finer species of creature than a working man. And in our 
own day, are not the notions of a God who is pleased 
with lighted candles, or in whose character mere good- 
nature or ' unconditioned wisdom ' has superseded all 
regard for the distinction between crime and virtue, but 
varieties of the same vice ? It may indeed be rejoined that 
all higher conceptions of God's character are but the reflex 
of the higher human sentiments, as the other of the lower 
ones. And then we come to the question of fact which, as 
I have said before, each man must decide for himself. 

To return to the Assyrian conqueror : — He does not 
suspect that he is the instrument in the hands of Jehovah, 
much less desire Jehovah's help or guidance ; and there- 
fore, according to the prophet's view of things, he does not 
rely on any god, but simply on his own military power 
and political sagacity. He first boasts that he does all 
things by his own prudence and strength, and then dwells 
exultingly on the nature of his doings : valiant man that 
he is, he puts down one nation after another, taking pos- 
session of their treasuries, transplanting the inhabitants to 
other cities and lands, and obliterating the ancient limits of 
what from independent kingdoms are now but provinces in 
his great military empire. He has come upon nation after 
nation as it dwelt in peace with all the fruits of peace, and 
has ' found their riches as a nest ;'* he has gathered all the 

* Sennacherib says, ' They had set their dwellings, like birds' nests, in 
fortresses on the tops of the mountains.' — Oppert, Inscriptions des Sargonides, 
p. 46 ; Schrader, Die Keilinschriften, u. d. A. T. 

Xenophon says of the attempt of Epaminondas to surprise Sparta, — - 
tXafitv av rr)v ttoXiv w(77rfp vsorriav, Tzavraixaaiv e^rj/xov tujv d/jivvofxkviov. 
— Hellen. vii. 5, 10, quoted in Grote's History of Greeie, x. 454. This 



i34 



THE WIELDER OF THE SCOURGE. 



earth as one gathers the eggs from which he has first 
driven off the terrified hen-bird. But she would hover 
round her rifled nest and its plunderer with a trepidating 
flight and piercing cry, than which no movements and 
sounds in the brute creation express more anguish ; 
while these spoiled nations dare not show even such 
instinctive signs of a broken heart, but know a depth 
beyond that depth : — ' there was none that moved the 
wing, or opened the mouth, or chirped.' But such boasting 
is as if the axe or the saw should boast itself against 
him who uses it ; — as if the staff of dead wood should lift 
him who is not wood but the living man who holds it. 

This passage (verses 13 — 15), itself a specimen of the 
whole context, is quite a study, political and artistic : 
political for him who seeks the law of the rise and fall of 
military despotisms ; artistic, as an illustration of the 
working of the imagination, the 'power by which one 
image or feeling is made to modify many others, and by a 
sort of fusion to force many into one, .... and which, 
combining many circumstances into one moment of con- 
sciousness, tends to produce that ultimate end of all human 
thought and human feelings, unity, and thereby the reduc- 
tion of the spirit to its Principle and Fountain, who is 
alone truly One.'* And the prophet and poet goes on 
with the same luxuriance of imagination, and the same 
severity of righteous faith. ' The Lord, the Loed of hosts, 
shall send among his fat ones leanness :' the allusion seems 
to be to fat herds, 1 fat bulls of Bashan and these one would 
almost say suggested the thought of the oaks of Bashan, if 
the previous mention of the axe and the saw did not seem 
to reverse the succession of the images which crowd in 
on every side. The ' glory,' the whole equipments and 
ammunitions, the pomp and the splendour of the warrior 
king, shall be burnt up, and the Light of Israel shall be 
the consuming fire. If the Assyrians are to be thus 
destroyed it is because they are mere noxious thorns and 

alarm must have been as thrilling to a Greek as the danger of Jerusalem 
to a Jew : and it is interesting to notice the universal language of passion 
in remote times and peoples. 

* Coleridge's Literary Hemains, vol. ii. pp. 55, 56. These lectures on the 
genius of Sbakspeare throw much light on that of Isaiah. 



THE DELIVERANCE. 



135 



briers, only fit for burning. If their power entitles them 
to be rather compared with lofty forest trees, and - their 
wealth and extended dominion to the ' fruitful field ' with 
its vineyards, and olive-grounds, and gardens, still they shall 
be consumed, even as they have often wasted such scenes 
with fire in their marches : they shall be destroyed utterly, 
' soul and body,' for they are no trees but men, and like 
men wasted by sickness they shall perish. And then, to 
gather up the whole once more in the picture of the 
heaven-kindled conflagration of the forest with its lofty 
trees and its jungles and the fruitful fields lying all about 
it, — we see of all these trees, which it would have once 
required many and skilful enumerators to reckon, so few 
that a child can count and write them down, while the 
child himself, in the midst of the desolation, suggests new 
trains of thought not foreign to the subject. 

If Assyria is to be reduced to such a remnant, so is the 
joeople, the two houses, of Israel. The Lord of hosts has 
decreed a righteous execution of judgment upon his guilty 
people through the land, and though they were as the sand 
of the sea in numbers, only a remnant of them shall be left. 
But that remnant shall return* unto their God and King : 
they will have learnt the lesson sent through so much suffer- 
ing; and instead of continuing to trust in Assyria, and their 
alliance with that worldly and faithless power, they ' shall 
stay upon Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.' And 
then Isaiah, with that feminine tenderness which so fre- 
quently shows itself in his sternest denunciations, hastens 
to exclaim, ' Therefore, thus saith the Lord God of hosts, 0 
my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the 
Assyrian ;' it is true that he shall for a time oppress you 
with a bondage like that which in old times you endured 
when you were the serfs of Pharaoh or the tributaries of 
Midian ; but as the slaughter at the rock of Oreb was an 
effectual scourge to that scourge of Israel, and as the rods 
of the Egyptian taskmasters were broken in the hour in 
which Moses stretched out his rod upon the sea, so shall 
it be now ; for yet a little while, and Jehovah will raise 

* Shear jashub are the words of the original, where there is also a play on 
Jashub and Jacob, such as Tsaiah is fond of. 



136 THE MARCH ON JERUSALEM. 



up his scourge, and lift up his rod, and his indignation 
against his people shall cease in the destruction of their, 
and his, enemies. In that day they shall be freed from the 
galling yoke and the heavy taxes of Assyrian suzerainty ; 
and Judah shall not merely be freed from her oppressor, 
but shall be freed by restored life and vigour : — the meta- 
phor of the yoke suggests that of the bullock bursting it 
by the fatness of his neck, or rejecting it in the lustihood 
of his strength, as in Deut. xxxii. 15 ; Hosea iv. 16, x. 11. 

Isaiah then gives a vivid description of the march of 
the Assyrians upon Jerusalem, as it ' flashed upon his 
inward eye,' with all the distinctness of sense, or perhaps 
as it was actually occurring at the time. Sargon may 
have thus threatened Jerusalem from the north, in the 
campaign in which he claims to have subdued Judah* — 
either immediately after he had taken Samaria, or in one 
of his subsequent invasions of Philistia. Whether as 
vision or as fact, this march is better connected with 
Sargon than with Sennacherib. For though both the 
traditional name of the ' camp of the Assyrians ' which 
still existed in the time of Josephus, and the nature of the 
ground which lays Jerusalem most open to an attack on 
the north, make it probable that this was the quarter in 
which Kabshaketh did actually, a few years later, ' shake 
his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion,' the 
main army was before Lachish, and he would not have 
brought his force round by the defile of Michmash.t The 
places here mentioned, and several of which were found, 
still retaining their names, by Messrs. Robinson and 
Smith, J lay in succession between the northern frontier of 
Judah and Jerusalem : and the remains of a square tower 
and large hewn stones which they found at Jeba, opposite 
to Mukhmas (i.e., Michmash), and supposed to be Gibeah 
of Saul, and the like marks of Mukhmas itself having been 

* 'II reduisit la Judee (Iahouda), dont le site est lointain.' — Oppert, Les 
Inscriptions des Sargonides, p. 34. Compare Mr. Sayce on Isaiah xxxvi. — 
xxxix., in The Theological Review for Jan., 1873. 

f Schrader supposes Sennacherib to have sent a detachment of his army 
from some point north-west of Jerusalem. — Keilinschriften u. d.A. T., p. 251. 
But as Sargon made a campaign through the same countries, this prophecy 
may refer to the anticipation of a like attack from him. 

X Biblical Researches, vol. ii. p. 110, ff. 



ANCIENT ROADS. 



'37 



once a place of strength, taken in connection with the 
accounts in 1 Sam. xiii., xiv., and 1 Mac. ix. 73, make it 
intelligible that this may have been a route which Isaiah 
might reasonably expect the invaders to take. The high 
road indeed no longer runs that way, and Dr. Robinson 
says that the common approach to Jerusalem can never 
have lain through these deep and difficult ravines : but it 
has been pointed out to me* that while it would sufficiently 
vindicate the propriety of the picture to observe, that an 
Assyrian army would direct its course not by what might 
be the high road, but by what was the line of still un- 
plundered towns and villages, the geographical probability 
is all in favour of the route described having been the 
actual northern highway. For the present road, which is 
so much more practicable, lies along the water-shed, where 
the ground, although better for engineering purposes, is 
worse for houses or cultivation from the want of water: 
and such roads, in which the convenient junction of ex- 
treme points is the main object, are a comparatively 
modern invention, though the most in accordance with our 
notions of a highway. In Isaiah's time, even the main 
roads would be those which had been formed, stage by 
stage, for the communication of each town or village with 
the ones immediately before and behind it ; and these 
towns would, in the present state, have lain thickest in the 
very line in question : for while the water-shed is just to 
the west, and 'lower down the slope, towards the Jordan 
valley, all is a frightful desert,' the steep hill-sides, in which 
these towns were clustered, from Anathoth to Michmash, 
still show signs of that ' strong and fertile soil ' which (as 
has been explained before) only needs terracing to make 
the rock a garden, and which, even as it is, Dr. Robinson 
here found producing ' fields of grain occasionally, and fig- 
trees and olive-trees everywhere.' 

* By my brother, General R. Strachey. And this explanation by a military 
engineer is confirmed by Mr. Grote's solution of the like difficulty : — ' I 
do not share the doubts which have been raised about Xenophon's accuracy, 
in his description of the route from Sardis to Ikonium ; though the names of 
several of the places which he mentions are not known to us, and their sites 
cannot be exactly identified. There is a great departure from the straight 
line of bearing. But we at the present day assign more weight to that cir- 
cumstance than is suited to the days of Xenophon. Straight roads, stretch- 
ing systematically over a large region of country, ate not of that age : the 



i 3 8 ISAIAH X. 33, 34. THE ASSYRIAN BRANCH. 



The prophet sees the enemy's troops as they enter the 
frontier city Aiath, or Ai, which Joshua had once taken 
from the Canaanitish king : they pass through Migron ; 
and, meeting no resistance at Michmash, the northern key 
to the defile, they there leave their baggage lest it should 
impede the rapid advance with which ' they pass the Pass,' 
and establish their quarters at Geba, which commands 
the southern approach to Jerusalem. The inaction and 
stupor which had allowed this position to be mastered, 
is now succeeded by open panic : Eamah trembles ; Gibeah 
of Saul — the birth-place of the king of whose feats, and 
the feats of his son Jonathan, in discomfiting countless 
hosts of Philistines in these very defiles, the old national 
stories told — Gibeah is fled ; Laish hears the shrieks of 
Gallim ; and wretched Anathoth"* answers not with her 
echoes alone, but with a too real cry of despair, for an 
enemy, whom neither human pity nor fear of religion 
moves, is upon the city of Levites ; Madmenah is flown 
like a bird, and the inhabitants of Gebim have carried 
away their goods for safety ; every hill-top within sight of 
Jerusalem is covered with those terrible horsemen from 
the north ; at Nob the Assyrian is seen to halt for the 
day, preparatory to the assault, and 'he shakes his hand 
against the Mount of the daughter of Zion.' Then the vision 
gives place to another ; the prophet recals the previous 
promise, with the previous image it was expressed under : — 
Jehovah cuts off the top branch, the ornamental head of 
the tree, and the whole forest of trees and of underwood 
falls under his stroke, t The root of the word which I have 

communications were probably all originally made between one neighbouring- 
town and another, without much reference to saving of distance, and with no 
reference to any promotion of traffic between distant places. 'It was just 
about this time that King Archelaus began to ' cut straight roads ' in Mace- 
donia, — which Thucydides seems to note as a remarkable thing (ii. 100).' 
Hist, of Greece, ix. 23, note. 

* ' The prophet plainly alludes to the name of the place (lit. the Answers) ; 
and with a peculiar propriety, if it had its name from its remarkable echo.' 
— Lowth, on the verse. 

f ' Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge, 

"Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle, 

Under whose shade the ramping lion slept. 

Whose top-branch overpeered Jove's spreading tree, 

And kept low shrubs from winter's powerful wind.' 

Third Part of King Henry VI., v., 2. 



ISAIAH XI i— 12. THE BRANCH OF JESSE. 139 



translated ' top brancli ' means ' adorn/ so that it is the 
chief or top bough, forming the ornamental head of the 
tree, which is alluded to. 

The image is now transferred to the state and king of 
Israel, which is also to be cut down to the stump, like the 
tree in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. But out of that stump, 
and from its living roots, shall grow up a scion — one of 
those slender shoots which we see springing up from, and 
immediately round, the stock of a truncated tree.'" A 
king of the race of Jesse shall sit on the throne of his 
fathers, in accordance with the covenant made with 
David : — 

' I have made a covenant with my chosen, 
I have sworn unto David my servant, 
Thy seed will I establish for ever, 
And build up thy throne unto all generations.'f 

The Spirit of Jehovah shall not merely direct this son 
of David by occasional and transient impulses but shall 
abide continually with him, habitually filling him with the 
spirit, the very life, of insight into the principles and laws 
of God's government of the world, and of discernment how 
to apply those principles to actual circumstances, so as to 
bring the latter into harmony with the former ; he shall 
receive the spirit of true statesmanship, enabling him to 
understand and to rule, not ideas and things, but men ; he 
shall have that personal knowledge of God which is the 
living source of love and reverence for him ; his delight in 
this knowledge and fear of God shall enable him accurately 
to discern the like disposition in others, so that, with an 
eye purged from the film of sense he shall not fail to 
recognise the cause of truth and righteousness in his king- 
dom ; and when he has declared his righteous sentence, 
he will ever stand ready to execute it with prompt and 
strict justice. Then the wolf and the leopard shall make 
their homes with the lamb and the kid, while a little child 
leads the calf and the young lion together. For the earth 
shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah : — this is the 

* 4 Vos modo, milites, favete nomini Scipionum, soboli imperatorum ves- 
trorum, velut decisis recrescenti stirpibus.'' Liv. lib. xxvi. c. 41. Quoted by 
Vitringa. 

t Psalm Ixxxix. 3, 4. 



4 # 

140 THE GOLDEN AG^a 

reason why this golden age (described in language which 
Lowth says is not equalled by the ^classical or the Arabic 
and Persian poets) shall come in the days of the righteous 
king. It is because his kingdom, which is the kingdom 
of Jehovah, shall extend its influence over, and be re- 
cognized by, the whole earth. From the history of the 
reigns of David, Solomon, and Hezekiah, we see that when 
there was a righteous king in Israel, he not only governed 
his own people in wisdom and the fear of Jehovah, 
promoting education and civilization in that spirit of the 
ancient law and constitution which is embodied in the 
book of Deuteronomy, and thus establishing truth and 
justice, peace and happiness, religion and piety, through- 
out the land, but that he at the same time (as we might 
have expected) exercised a humanizing influence over the 
neighbouring nations, gave them glimpses at least of the 
superiority of the God of Israel over their own gods, and 
disseminated among them principles of moral and political 
order which continued to germinate more or less effectually, 
notwithstanding the resistance of national vice, ignorance, 
and superstition. But these, and such as these, were but 
the shadow of good things to come : the acts of J ewish kings, 
like the words of Jewish prophets, were but various and 
partial ways of repeating, rather than of realizing, the great 
cardinal promise made to Abraham, or the great prophetic 
ideal of the Kighteous King which was revealed to Isaiah 
and the rest of the prophets. But that betife* thing which 
God had provided for us, that they without us should not 
be perfect, is actually come in the coming of^Jesus Christ, 
the Son of David. By the manifestation of the Kighteous 
King in his own person, the golden age has been made far 
more actual, and we brought into a far closer connection 
with it, than was possible or even conceivable in the days 
of Solomon or Hezekiah. Then the chosen race itself had 
but a dim knowledge of God, and the nations of the earth 
could but hear of him through the testimony of the Jewish 
people and its kings ; but now a greater than Solomon, 
even the Loed himself, is come into each nation which re- 
ceives his gospel and his church, and abides in it as its 
ever-present though invisible King. True it is, that even 



ISAIAH XI. 13. EPHRAIM AND JUDAH. 141 



in those kingdoms of the world which have become the 
kingdoms of our Lokd Christ, we do not yet see all things 
put under his feet ; the ideal is still far from completely 
one with, and transcendent through and over, the actual, 
the heavenly over the earthly ; but by him who has an 
eye to see, the one may be plainly discerned everywhere 
hid under the other, capable of being developed, nay, 
waiting and ready to be revealed in ever new and more 
glorious forms. Our part is to believe this heartily, 
heartily to take our appointed share in the work of 
realization ; and not the less so, because we learn more 
and more every day that we do work, how small our share, 
how large God's share, in the work must be ; that man's 
chief business is to 

' Leave to Heaven 
The work of Heaven, and with a silent spirit 
Sympathize with the powers that work in silence.' 

I have followed our version in the use of the word 
'earth' in verse 9, though the original might equally be 
translated ' land ;' for 'land' would limit the promise of this 
kingdom of righteousness to Israel, and the reference to the 
1 peoples ' and the ' nations ' in the next verse, compared 
with such passages as chapter ii. 2 — 4, xix. 18 — 25, is 
in favour of the wider sense. But the idea of the universal 
kingdom is certainly not so prominent here as in those 
and many other places, being subordinated to that of the 
bringing back ' the outcasts of Israel ' and the ' dispersed 
of Judah from the four corners of the earth ' to their own 
land and Lord, and of their reunion into one people as at 
first. 

Jacob, in his prophetic statement of the fortunes of 
his sons, disregards the rights of primogeniture, and gives 
the pre-eminence to Judah and Joseph, and in the family 
of the latter to the younger son Ephraim. Hence, from 
the time of the exodus, these two were regarded as the 
leading tribes of Israel. Judah was much more numerous 
than Ephraim, took precedence during the journey in the 
wilderness, and received the largest portion in the pro- 
mised land. But Joshua was an Ephraimite ; and Shiloh, 
where the tabernacle long stood, was probably within the 



i 4 2 INTERNATIONAL JEALOUSIES 

limits of the same tribe. The ambitious jealousy of the 
Ephraimites towards other tribes appears in their conduct 
to Gideon and Jephthah. Their special jealousy of Judah 
showed itself in their temporary refusal to submit to David 
after the death of Saul, in their adherence to Absalom 
against his father, and in the readiness with which they 
joined in the revolt of Jeroboam, who was himself of the 
tribe of Ephraim. This schism was, therefore, not a 
sudden or fortuitous occurrence, but the natural result of 
causes which had long been working. The mutual relation 
of the two kingdoms is expressed in the recorded fact that 
' there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam, and 
between Asa and Baasha, all their days.' Exceptions to 
the general rule, as in the case of Ahab and Jehoshaphat, 
were rare, and a departure from the principles and ordinary 
feelings of the parties. The ten tribes, which assumed 
the name of Israel after the division, and perhaps before 
it, regarded the smaller and less warlike state with a con- 
tempt which is well expressed by Jehoash in his parable 
of the cedar and the thistle, unless the feeling there dis- 
played be rather personal than national. On the other 
hand, Judah justly regarded Israel as guilty not only of 
political revolt, but of religious apostacy, and the jealousy 
of Ephraim towards Judah would of course be increased 
by the fact that Jehovah had ' forsaken the tabernacle of 
Shiloh,' that he 'refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and 
chose not the tribe of Ephraim, but chose the tribe of 
Judah, the Mount Zion which he loved."* If Solomon 
had, like his father David, retained to the last his faith in 
the one God of Israel, and in that maxim of government 
which David laid down in his ' last words,' that ' he that 
ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God,' 
and if Rehoboam, Solomon's son, had followed in the same 
path, it is probable that they might have solved this diffi- 
cult political problem of fusing into one nation various 
conflicting parties and interests, of which I believe the 
solution has always failed or succeeded according as unity 

* Alexander's Prophecies of Isaiah, note on verse 13 ; his authorities are : — 
Gen. xlix. 8—12, 22—26, xlviii. 19 ; Numb. i. 27, 33, ii. 3, x. 14, xiii. 8; 
Josh, xviii. 1 ; 1 Sam. iv. 3 : Judges viii. 1, xii. 1 ; 1 Kings xi. 26, xiv. 30, 
xv. 16 ; 2 Kings xiv. 9 ; Psalm Ixxviii. 9—11, 60, 67, 68. 



OF THE HEBREW NATION. 



H3 



of national faith, and equality of civil rights and justice, 
have or have not been established : for the centralization 
of military force, whether domestic or foreign, is not a 
fusion, but a suppression and (if it lasts) a destruction, of 
the elements of national life. But Solomon forgot David's 
dying counsel that he should ' keep the charge of Jehovah 
his God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, and his 
commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies, as 
it was written in the law of Moses ; ' and his own prayer 
when he came to the throne, that Jehovah would give him 
1 an understanding heart to judge his people, to discern 
between good and evil,' and to follow the footsteps of David 
■ in truth, righteousness, and uprightness of heart before 
God,' and thus, and not with the arbitrary hand of the 
military chieftain, or the selfishness of the oriental 
despot, to make it his aim to govern ' this God's so great 
people.'* The men were not equal to the occasion, though 
by God's providence their failure was made to illustrate 

* 2 Sam. 'xxiii. 3; 1 Kings ii. 2 — 4; iii. 6 — 9. In referring the reader 
to these passages, it may not he out of place to notice an opinion that David's 
subsequent directions to Solomon 1 to hring down the hoar heads of Joah and 
Shimei to the grave with blood,' are expressions of a revengeful malice in- 
consistent with a character of piety and justice. A moderately thoughtful 
examination and comparison of the various notices of these men and the 
transactions in which they figured, including their deaths, will make it plain 
that Joab, though a faithful supporter of David's throne, was a brutal soldier, 
with an influence over the army which made him independent not only of the 
king but of the laws ; while Shimei was a powerful chieftain of the house of 
Saul, and ready to proceed to any opposition to the reigning dynasty. David 
was unable to dismiss Joab, and, in a temper as humane as politic, he included 
the rebel Shimei in the general amnesty when he recovered his crown, and 
declared, ' There shall no man be put to death this day in Israel.' But he 
warned Solomon — and Solomon's mode of acting on the warning gives the 
fair historical interpretation of its precise meaning — that these two men 
would be his most dangerous enemies, the one of his person and house, and 
the other (who { shed the blood of war in peace, and put the blood of war 
upon his girdle that was about his loins, and in his shoes that were on his 
teet ') of his endeavour to govern the nation by civil law and justice, and not by 
force ; and that therefore he must watch them narrowly, and if they did again 
break out, he must not be deterred by a misplaced reverence of pity for their 
age, or the hope they could not do much harm in their few remaining years, 
from executing strict justice on them. Joab joined a conspiracy for deposing 
Solomon, and Shimei' s reason for quitting the surveillance imposed on him, 
was believed by Solomon to be, and probably was, a pretext for a like course. 
Burke, who cultivated his love of justice and hatred of all oppression by the 
study of the Bible and of real life and history, shows incidentally that he thus 
read this story of David, when (in one of his speeches on financial reform, I 
ihink) he warns his hearers that 'they must not spare the hoary head of 
inveterate abuse.' David did several very cruel as well as arbitrary acts : 
but we need not resign the use of our reason in reading the Bible for fear 
men should call us superstitious. 



DISRUPTION OF THE KINGDOM. 



the political law as clearly as their success would have 
done. And though the student of history feels the same 
regret at this permanent disruption of what should have 
been organic and mutually supporting members of a one 
Hebrew commonwealth, as he does at the always frustrated 
hopes of a national unity in ancient Greece ; yet in the one 
case or the other a deeper insight into what was possible 
in the then stage of the political growth and education of 
the human race, teaches us that the evil was the only con- 
dition on which it was practicable to secure the far greater 
good which was secured, and has become a part of the 
imperishable heritage of mankind. The experiments of 
Sparta and of Athens, and still more those of Macedon, 
and, above all, of Rome, show us that the problem of how 
to unite liberty with centralization, could not be solved 
in that age. And so no doubt it was with the Hebrews ; 
though their worship of One God at Jerusalem gave them 
facilities for true national unity known nowhere else before 
the times of the Gospel. It has been observed that the 
scriptural account of the power of Solomon resembles, 
almost word for word, some of the paragraphs in the great 
inscriptions at Nimroud. ' Solomon reigned over the 
kingdoms from the river [Euphrates] unto the land of the 
Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt : they brought 
him presents ... a rate year by year .... and served 

Solomon all the days of his life He had dominion 

over all the region on this side the river, from Tiphsah 
even unto Azzah, over all the kings on this side the river.'* 
And when we thus see on what a precipice Solomon stood, 
and what his descendants and their people might have 
become ; when we reflect what not only Israel, but the 
world would have been, if instead of a Bible we had had 
the annals of a race of Hebrew Sargons and Sennacheribs, 
and in the fulness of time a Kehama — an incarnation of 
evil — instead of a Son of God, we shall perceive that if 
ever man spoke by the spirit of God, or did a deed for 
which all posterity should call him blessed, it was that radical 
and revolutionist the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite, who 

* 1 Kings iv. 21, 24 ; 2 Chron. ix. 24, 26. Quoted, with the above observa- 
tion, by Mr. Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 635. 



REVOLUTION AND REFORM. 



stirred up the young soldier Jeroboam to plot against his 
master Solomon, and openly and successfully to rebel against 
Kehoboam. At the same time, as I have already observed, 
we must not overlook that this, like the other instances of 
prophets instigating rebellion, belongs to the earlier history 
of the nation : the later prophets habitually recognize that 
highest discovery of constitutional politics, that in the 
maturer age of a commonwealth all reforms can and 
must be effected by a discussion which, though absolutely 
refusing all restraint to its words, keeps steadily within 
the limits of the existing laws, till it can change them by 
the power of words alone. Of the increased clearness with 
which this momentous distinction is apprehended by our 
non-beneficed classes in England, we owe more than is 
usually acknowledged to Mr. Cobden, and his colleagues in 
the Anti-Corn Law Agitation* By precept, practice, and 
success, they have made the truth so popularly intelligible, 
that we may hope that it is as firmly established among 
us as the case admits of. For in politics as in every other 
region of human thought and action, it is not the mere 
establishment of maxims and traditions, however rational, 
but the presence of a moral and religious life in the honest 
and earnest application of these, which upholds a con- 
stitution. 

The hope and promise of a reunion of the two houses of 
Israel, which Isaiah utters, are repeated by Ezekiel :t we 
cannot doubt that such a prospect must have animated the 
pious and the wise of the nation in each age : and the 
historians, in terms which show their own appreciation of 
events such as had not been 1 from the days of the judges 
that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of 
Israel, nor of the kings of Judah,' describe a resort of per- 
sons from all parts of the northern kingdom to keep the 
passover at Jerusalem in the reigns of both Hezekiah and 
Josiah, followed by a general visitation of the cities not 
only of Judah and Benjamin, but also of ' Ephraim and 
Manasseh,' and ' Simeon even unto Naphthali,' for the pur- 
pose of purging the land of the altars, images, and groves 

* Written in 1851. f Chapter xxxvii. 15-28. 

L 



1 46 ISAIAH XI. 14—16. EPHRAIM AND JUDAH. 



of the false gods.* And from these statements of almost 
exclusively ecclesiastical historians we may infer, with 
little danger of being carried away by fancy, that there 
were corresponding facts in the civil condition of society, 
and that in the transient gleams of peace and prosperity 
which Judah experienced after the fall of Samaria and 
the Ephraimite monarchy, Jerusalem, and the throne, as 
well as the temple there, became the recognized seat of 
authority for such of the people of the Ten Tribes as had 
not been carried away by the Assyrians, and as preferred 
dwelling in towns or villages with the habits of civilization 
and of civil order, to those of mere pastoral families or 
tribes wandering in the desert at their own will. It was 
indeed but a feeble restoration of the times of David 
and Solomon, or even of the earlier commonwealth ; nor 
was that a better state of things which prevailed from 
the days of Ezra to those of Christ, who proclaimed the 
fact of a deeper ground of unity than that of descent from 
Jacob, and of whose meeting with the woman of Samaria 
we may apply, in reference to this point, his saying, that 
a greater than Solomon was there. 

Ephraim and Judah shall be at one ; together they shall 
sweep down like eagles upon the hill-country of Palestine, 
and on the Arab tribes that wander through the eastern 
deserts ; Edom, Moab, and Ammon, shall again become 
tributaries as they were in the best times of the 
monarchy : even the great nations of Egypt and Assyria 
shall give up their captives, — for in that day Jehovah will 
not only dry up the Red Sea, as of old, but will extend 
the same power to the Euphrates, striking its deep streams 
into many shallow ones, and thus making a way for his 
people to return out of both of these lands. Pathros is 
Thebais, or Upper Egypt ; Cush is Ethiopia, and also 
Arabia Deserta, along the east coast of the Red Sea ; 
Elam is Elymais, adjoining — and often used to include — 
Persia, as well as Susiana, and Media ; Shinar, Babylonia ; 
Hamath, a chief city of Syria ; and the Islands of the Sea 
are the isles and the coasts of the Mediterranean. 

* 2 Chron. xxx. 1 to xxxi. 1 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 1—23 ; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 29 
to xxxv. 18. 



DEPORTATIONS OF THE JEWS, 



H7 



The Chronicles mention as a great national calamity the 
numbers of captives taken by the Syrians, Ephraimites, 
Edomites and Philistines, during the reign of Ahaz.* Joel 
speaks of the Tyrians, Zidonians, and Philistines, selling 
the Jews to the Grecians, t and Amos seems to allude to 
a similar sale to the Edomites. J Isaiah refers elsewhere 
(chap. xvi. 4) to Jews who had fled their own country to 
escape domestic or foreign oppression ; and in the times of 
Jeremiah we have like instances. § And Hezekiah, when 
Rabshakeh was before Jerusalem, and Sennacherib in pos- 
session of the country and cities round, desires the prophet 
to 'lift up his prayer for the remnant that is left.'|| And 
comparing these and similar If proofs of the practice of the 
Jews, and of their enemies with that of all the other nations 
of antiquity, we have abundant evidence — even without 
referring to Sennacherib's account of his having carried off 
the whole population which dwelled around Jerusalem** 
— that during the reigns of Ahaz and his successor there 
was such a dispersion and captivity of the people as that 
from which Isaiah here promises the restoration. That 
the fulfilment of this promise in the succeeding reign of 
Hezekiah was most inadequate, must be evident to him 
who sets the outward possibilities of the occasion against' 
the unbounded magnificence of the prophetic ideal : yet it 
need not be doubted that such a fulfilment as the case did 
admit would have been brought about by the king, and 
the relations of those of his subjects who were in exile or 
slavery : for in the latter years of his reign, when 1 many 
brought gifts unto Jehovah to Jerusalem, and presents to 
Hezekiah king of Judah so that he was magnified in the 
sight of all nations from thenceforth,' he would have been 
well able to demand the restoration of his people with 
effect. The reference to the Philistines may be compared 
with Sennacherib's statement that ' the nobles and the 
people of Ekron put their king Padi, his ally, and the 
vassal of Assyria, in irons and delivered him to Hezekiah 

* 2 Chron. xxviii. 5, 8, 17 ; xxix. 9. f Joel iii. 6. 

i Amos i. 9. § Jeremiah, xli. xlii. || Isaiah xxxviii. 4. 

if As 2 Kings xv. 29 ; xvii. 6, 18. 

** Rawlinson, Outline of the History of Assyria, p. 23. Opperfc, Inscrip- 
tions des Sargonides, p. 45 ; Schrader, Die Keilinschriften, u. d. A. T., p. 176. 

L 2 



1 48 ISAIAH XII. — A HYMN OF THE CHURCH 



of Judaea, with hostile intentions, under cover of night.'* 
The smiting the Euphrates into seven streams, Grotius, 
with his wonted clear and practical appreciation of fact and 
history, refers to the partial dismemberment of Assyria by 
the defection of the Medes and Chaldees, which, according 
to Herodotus, took place about the same time with Sen- 
nacherib's retreat from the invasion of Judaea and Egypt : 
for the reconciliation of the Greek historian with the native 
records, we must wait till they are -more thoroughly deci- 
phered and translated. 

The prophet finally concludes this prophecy, the struc- 
ture of which we have so often paused to admire in its 
various parts, with a hymn, after the manner of those 
which in the Book of Psalms have these two thousand 
years been reckoned among the most precious treasures of 
men, women, and children, all over the world. It is a 
hymn of the restored church, which Isaiah puts into her 
mouth ' in that day.' I say the restored church, rather 
than the nation, because the whole matter as well as tone 
of the hymn — as indeed the name hymn would signify — 
marks that church is the proper word here. It is as impos- 
sible to understand the history and literature of ancient 
Israel as it is those of modern France, Germany, or 
England, if we do not duly appreciate the presence and 
influence of the church in each. And by the church of 
the Hebrews I do not here mean their national and 
endowed priesthood with its prescribed laws and rituals 
for national worship and education, and which are 
analogous to the like institution among ourselves ; I 
speak of that spiritual brotherhood of which the eccle- 
siastical ' estate of the realm ' in any nation is the proper 
symbol, and which embodies and expresses itself in and by 
that symbol in as far as it can ; but which cannot limit 
itself to that or any other earthly form, because it is itself 
heavenly, and transcends all the partial and imperfect forms 
of earth, even when they are at their best, and still more 
so when (as often happens) they have become deeply, or 

* See the references in the last note. Sir Henry Rawlinson, M. Oppert, 
and Dr. Schrader give different versions of the last words. I follow Dr. 
Schrader. 



THE WORLD AND THE CHURCH. 



149 



even hopelessly, corrupted and decayed. This brotherhood 
has God for its father, and for its elder brother and head 
the Son of God, whom the Apostle beheld in vision, while 
' ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of 
thousands,' sang — ' Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed 
us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, 
and people, and nation : and hast made us unto our God 
kings and priests ; and we shall reign on the earth.' And 
what St. John contemplated and declared with the eye and 
tongue of the old Hebrew seers, St. Paul has set forth in 
the language and by the methods of European philosophy ; 
while the life and substance of the teaching of both is 
contained in the last discourses of their Master and ours, 
who said, ' Neither pray I for these alone, but for them 
also which shall believe on me through their word ; that 
they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in 
thee, that they also may be one in us : that the world may 
believe that thou hast sent me.' The world and the church 
are the two universal opposites : not the world merely in 
some particularly bad sense, but in all senses, good and 
bad ; — the world which hates and resists the church with 
active enmity ; the world which hinders the church by its 
indifference, selfishness, corruption, and decay ; and also 
the world into which the church is in all ages infusing its 
own, or rather its Lord's, unworldly, heavenly spirit ; 
which shall be at last entirely renewed by that spirit, and 
shall ' believe ' that the church and the Lord of the church 
were indeed sent by the Father of all, that his Name may 
be glorified in and through all. This church, which 
Socrates and Plato hoped to find, and dwell in, after 
death,* but which Jesus Christ and his Apostles tell us, 
and we know is actually set up and open, upon earth, 
was to the Hebrew nation neither a mere future hope, nor 

* ' This law of degeneracy [according to Plato] exists in the common- 
wealths of the earth, just because they have not understood and steadfastly 
contemplated that original model, that perfect idea of a commonwealth, 
which is also the original model and perfect idea of a human character. It 
is a contradiction and absurdity then to allege the fact of this degeneracy as 
a proof that no such model is to be found. But after all these inquiries does 
the thought still linger about the mind, where is it to be found ? Plato 
answers (book ix. p. fin.), 'AW iv oiipav^ taojg vapddtiyfia avaKtirai ri\t 
(3ov\ofi'tv(i> opav Kai opCovri iavrbv KaTonci&iv. Is it wonderful that such 
words should have suggested to some of the Christian fathers the recollec- 



THE CHURCH, NATIONAL 



a complete present possession. It was present, but present 
in the germ, and not in the fruit or flower. It deepened, 
sanctified, spiritualized their family relations, and their 
national life, literature, and worship ; we see it pervading 
their traditions, history, laws, and the writings of their 
psalmists and prophets, and forming the channel through 
which God ' spake to them at sundry times and in divers 
manners but we see also that the prophets themselves, 
when most conscious of the reality of the divine Word and 
Spirit imparted to them, felt that they wanted something 
more, namely, a universal instead of a partial, occasional, 
measured, gift of the Spirit. ' The Holy Ghost was not 
yet given ' (that is, not ' without measure,' as it is else- 
Avhere expressed) ' because that Jesus was not yet glorified ;' 
and therefore, though the prophets knew that their nation 
had really been based from the first upon God's covenant, 
and upheld by his presence as their Lord, still they felt 
that they needed ' a new covenant,' and looked forward to 
a day when J ehovah should put his law in their hearts, and 
when they should no more have occasion to teach each 
other how to know the Lord, because not merely law- 
givers, kings, and prophets, but the humblest peasant and 
child, should know him for himself* It may be said that 
we are even now no better off than they were, for it is the 
world and not the church which still predominates every- 
where ; and that we think ourselves happy if we can infuse 
some little spiritual life into corrupt and decayed family 
and national institutions, while the expectation of their 
perfect renewal by the presence and power of a universal 
and heavenly brotherhood set up among us here on earth, 
is but a hope for the remotest future, if even that. It may 
be so : our Christian faith may have sunk not merely to 
the level of the Jewish prophet, but to that of the Greek 
philosopher : we may only hope that perhaps we may find 
what we want in some other world after death. But then 

tion of those words in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which describe the hopes 
of the head of the covenanted people, 'E&Ssxtro yap rt)v roiic OsfjifXiovc, 
tXovvav ttSXiv r)g tsxvit7)q icai SrjfiiovpyoQ 6 Qeoq ; or those which describe 
this hope as accomplished, 'H/xiov rb 7ro\irfvfia tv ovpavoiq vTrapxei?' — 
Maurice's Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, pp. 153, 154 (2nd Edition). 
* Jeremiah xxxi. 31 — 34. 



AND UNIVERSAL. 



the difference between them and us is that both of them 
believed and accepted all that it was given them to- know, 
but we do not. The Kingdom of God is manifested among 
us, but we deny its presence. We deny it socially even 
when we seem to acknowledge it individually ; and the 
consequent taint and curse of worldliness which pervade 
everything, even our religion, can only be got rid of in 
proportion as our social as well as our individual life is 
renewed by faith in Christ, who, being the Head, is the 
source of life in all the relations which the members of the 
body have with one another.* 

But while we recognize this distinction of the Jew from 
the Christian as well as from the Gentile, — that the first 
had the church, though yet in its germ and promise, — it 
does not follow that we are to disregard the various and 
successive stages of its development among the Jews 
themselves. And in this and the other earlier prophecies 
of Isaiah, we should go much against their actual lan- 
guage and tone, as well as against probability, if we sup- 
posed that the youthful patriot grown up in the prosperous 
reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, and having seen only two 
or three years of national calamity, was looking at things 
as Jeremiah looks at them in the passage quoted above, 
when a moral and material decay of many generations 
had brought the commonwealth to the lowest depression, 
and spiritual hope was stimulated by the utter despair of 
earth. It is more in accordance with all the facts to 
believe that Isaiah, when he puts this hymn in the mouth 
of the remnant of Jehovah's people, recovered from the 
four corners of the earth, was anticipating such a restora- 
tion of the national church as he did witness a few years 
after, in the reign of the pious Hezekiah, — a restoration 
which consisted not merely in the re-opening the temple, 
and re-establishing the daily worship and the yearly 
festivals, but much more in the humble, holy, devout 
spirit of repentance, hope, and faith, in which the king 
and people confessed before God that it was for their sins 

* The reader will see that I have followed Coleridge's exposition of the 
relation of the universal to a national church, in his essay on Church and 
State. 



THE OBLATION OF WATER 



that ' their fathers had fallen by the sword, and their sons, 
and their daughters, and their wives, were in captivity 
and that they now ' turned again to him, the Lord God of 
Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, believing that he would return 
to the remnant of them who were escaped out of the hand 
of the kings of Assyria, and that their brethren and their 
children would find compassion before them that led them 
captive, so that they should come again into their own 
land, because Jehovah their God was gracious and merciful, 
and would not turn away his face from them if they 
returned to him.'* The historical narrative is indeed a 
striking counterpart of the prophecy ; the influence of 
the man who uttered the latter is manifest in the pro- 
ceedings chronicled by the former ; and each makes the 
other an intelligible and coherent portion of one history. 

The Talmudists refer the words, 'With joy shall ye 
draw water out of the wells of salvation,' to the custom of 
making an oblation of water on the last day of the Feast 
of Tabernacles, when a priest fetched water in a golden 
pitcher from the fountain of Siloah, and poured it mixed 
with wine on the morning sacrifice as it lay on the altar : 
while at the evening offering the same was done amidst 
shouts of joy from the assembled people. It was in obvious 
allusion to this rite that, ' in the last day, that great day 
of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man 
thirst let him come unto me and drink ; ' but as it is not 
prescribed in the law of Moses, it has been doubted whether 
it dates back earlier than the times of the Maccabees. It 
is however at least as probable that the Asmonean princes 
should have restored an ancient as ordained a new rite : 
such a rite, to acknowledge God's gift of the water without 
which harvest and vintage must have failed, would always 
have been a likely accompaniment of the feast in which 
these were celebrated ; and the like acts of Samuel and 
Elijah, though for different purposes, perhaps go in con- 
firmation of the ancient existence of such a practice.! Be 
this as it may, the idea conveyed by the image of the 
living water will be the same : — c Such as is the refresh- 

* 2 Chronicles xxix. xxx. xxxi. 
f 1 Samuel vii. 6 ; 1 Kings xix. 33 — 35. 



AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 



53 



ment of water from the spring, and from the clouds of 
heaven to the parched lips and the thirsty land, in this 
our sultry climate, such shall be the refreshment to your 
spirit in that day from the salvation of Jehovah. He shall 
dwell among you, and his spirit shall be a well of life to 
the whole nation.' Ewald pronounces that chapter xii. 
cannot be by Isaiah : — ' Words, images, turns of expression, 
as well as the whole subject matter and spirit — none are 
Isaiah's ; and this is so manifest that to produce further 
proof of it were superfluous.' If any one could be qualified 
to speak thus peremptorily it would be Ewald : yet Knobel, 
who is himself ready to use the like argument on other 
occasions, is here content to say curtly that Ewald has no 
ground for this judgment. I shall have occasion to recur 
to this subject immediately. 



CHAPTER IX. 



ISAIAH XIII., XIV. — GENUINENESS OF THE PROPHECIES ON BABYLON. — SCEPTICAL 
CRITICISM — ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS — NOT POSITIVE OR CONSTRUCTIVE. 

■ — ORTHODOX CRITICISM. RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY. TRADITIONAL 

COMMENTS CONFOUNDED WITH THE TEXT.— HEBREW HISTORICAL NOTICES 

OF BABYLON ASSYRIAN NOTICES. BABYLON SACKED IN ISAIAH'S TIME BY 

PERSIANS, AND PERHAPS BY MEDES. BABYLON A DIAGRAM OR IDEOGRAPH. 

— ARGUMENTS FROM STYLE. — SUSPENSE BETTER TRAN HASTY DECISION. — 
FINAL OVERTHROW OF THE EMPIRE OF FORCE. 

' rpHE burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amos 
-L did see.' — Many of the most learned of the modern 
commentators maintain that this Title must be pronounced 
to be spurious, and the prophecy at the head of which it 
stands, as well as several others in the book, and especially 
chapters xl. to lxvi., to have been written towards the end 
of the great Babylonish Captivity. The question is not 
one of Hebrew scholarship, for the authenticity of these 
chapters is maintained by scholars not incompetent oppo- 
nents to those by whom it is denied. Nor is it altogether 
a question of religious belief, though it has been a good 
deal confused and complicated by the assertion that it 
is so. The belief that the book forms a part of the 
revelation of God to man has indeed avowedly guided the 
arguments of those critics who maintain its authenticity 
as the work of Isaiah ; but the more thoughtful of them 
admit that the two conclusions do not stand or fall to- 
gether, while there has been no deeper or more religious 
appreciation of the nature of prophecy than that of some 
of the critics who continue to assert the late authorship of 
the portions of the book now under consideration. The 
question is, in truth, mainly one of critical method ; and 
its solution, or such an approach to it as the existing 
evidence may finally make possible, can only be obtained 



GENUINENESS OF CERTAIN PROPHECIES. 155 



by a more strict, and so to speak scientific, regard to 
induction and verification of the facts and inferences than 
has been hitherto shown on either side. It may not 
always be possible in historical criticism to separate fact 
from theory so completely as in physical inquiry ; but the 
distinction is not the less real ; and there is much of the 
criticism upon the writings of Isaiah which bears the same 
relation to a really historical investigation as ingenious 
speculations on the origin of the world and its inhabitants 
do to the observations and inductions by which the foun- 
dations of the physical sciences have been slowly but surely 
laid. Still there is also much on both sides which is 
really sound, and the controversy has already been fruitful, 
and promises to be more so. This will be apparent from 
a sketch of its history. 

The insight — political and religious — of Milton and 
Grotius enabled them to anticipate the principles and 
method required for the thorough understanding of Hebrew 
prophecy ; but this insight was imperfectly shared even 
by the great Vitringa, who may be taken as the type of 
the best commentators on Isaiah up to the latter years of 
the eighteenth century. These commentators never seem 
to have distinctly asked themselves what manner of man 
Isaiah actually was, and what his actual relations to other 
men in his own times, or in those which have followed. 
Not that they denied, or altogether failed to recognize, 
that Isaiah was a real man, patriot, and politician ; but 
the experience of their own Christian faith had convinced 
them that they had another and deeper interest in the 
words of Isaiah than in those of any patriot or politician, 
ancient or modern ; they accepted the common explana- 
tion of this experience — ' that Isaiah was inspired, and his 
prophecies a part of the revelation of God to man;' and 
then they adopted, and employed all their learning and 
ingenuity to maintain, the notion — in former times floating 
vaguely on the surface of a deeper and truer belief, but 
now reduced to a coherent system — that not only was 'all 
Scripture given by inspiration,' but that (contrary to the 
constant declaration of Scripture itself) inspiration was 
confined to the writers of Scripture, and consisted not in 



THE NEW CRITICISM, 



the perpetual presence and indwelling of God's spirit in 
men, but mainly and eminently, though not entirely, in 
special arbitrary and miraculous communications from God 
through the prophet or apostle, who was himself little 
more than a mechanical instrument for the purpose. And, 
therefore, while they give a predominance to the religious 
and Christian interest of Isaiah's prophecies, to which it 
can only be objected that it is shown apart from their 
national and human interest, instead of in the entire union 
in which the two stand together in the prophecies them- 
selves, we find them maintaining that these prophecies are 
full of miraculous predictions of future events, which could 
only have been made known to the prophet because God 
had seen fit to suspend or supersede the laws of nature 
and the human mind for the occasion. 

The publication of Bishop Lowth's work on Isaiah in 
1786, gave a new interest and a new direction to the 
study of the subject. While Lowth accepted the ordinary 
orthodox views of prophecy, it was his main object to 
exhibit Isaiah as a poet not inferior to the great classical 
models, and to remove the obstacles to his being duly 
appreciated as such, partly by literary illustrations, and 
partly by a new translation in which man}' real errors or 
obscurities of the authorized version were avoided, while 
the whole was made to assume a form more in accordance 
with classical, or supposed classical, canons. The last 
point he endeavoured to attain by a free use of conjectural 
emendations — his own, and those of ancient versions or 
modern scholars — of the text, in places of which it was 
not then seen that they were already in harmony with the 
canons of Hebrew, and often even of English, taste, and 
could only be injured by being altered. And though these 
particular conjectures were soon set aside by Hebrew 
scholars, as wanting alike in authority and probability, 
yet the spirit of them, as well as of the criticism they were 
intended to support, appeared in new forms. Lowth had 
employed himself in making it clear that Isaiah was a 
real poet : certain of his German contemporaries and suc- 
cessors proposed to prove by Lowth's methods that he was 
a real patriot, politician, and man of flesh and blood, like 



ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS. 



*57 



Socrates, or Cicero, or the men of the eighteenth, century 
itself. Destructive analysis and hypothetical reconstruction 
were the critical methods of the age, and the commentators 
on Isaiah employed them as their contemporaries were 
employing them upon the classical authors. The destruc- 
tive criticism did much service by the sceptical questioning 
and skilful anatomy with which it refuted many figments 
of the commentators and swept away much accumulated 
rubbish ; but wdien the combined efforts of this criticism 
during forty years had reduced the unquestioned portions 
of the writings of Isaiah to five chapters and six verses of 
a sixth,* it had plainly gone too far, and its results were 

* e Si enim ea perlegeris quas Koppius, Doederlinius, Eichornius, Paulas, 
Rosenmiillerus, Berth oldus, Gesenius, alii, de authentia oraculorum Esaiaa 
doceant, invenies perpauca oracula intacta restare : scilicet ea quae legentur 
c. i. 3 — 9, xvii. xx. xxviii. xxxi. xxxiii.' J. U. Moller, De Authentia 
Oraculorum Esaice. Havniae, 1825. Dr. Alexander, in the introduction to 
his Commentary, gives the following account of some of the different conten- 
tions as to what should he received as the genuine writings of Isaiah : — ■ 
1 Chapter vii. 1 — 16 is regarded hy Gesenius as probably not the composition 
of Isaiah, who is mentioned in the third person. This opinion is refuted by 
Hitzig, and repudiated by the later writers. Koppe's idea that the twelfth 
chapter is a hymn of later date, after being rejected by Gesenius and revived 
by Ewald has again been set aside by Umbreit. The genuineness of chapters 
xiii. xiv. 1 — 23 is more unanimously called in question on account of its re- 
semblance to chapters xl. — lxvi. which this whole class of critics set aside as 
spurious. Chapters xv. and xvi. are ascribed by Koppe and Bertholdt to 
Jeremiah ; by Ewald andlTmbreit to an unknown prophet older than Isaiah ; 
by Hitzig, Maurer, and Knobel to Jonah ; by Hendewerk to Isaiah himself. 
Eichorn rejects the nineteenth chapter ; Gesenius calls in question the 
genuineness of w. 18 — 20 ; Koppe denies that of vv. 18 — 25 ; Hitzig regards 
vv. 16 — 25 as a fabrication of the Jewish priest Onias ; while Eosenmuller, 
Hendewerk, Ewald, and Umbreit, vindicate the whole as a genuine production 
of Isaiah. The first ten verses of the twenty -first chapter are rejected on the 
ground of their resemblance to the thirteenth and fourteenth. Ewald ascribes 
both to a single author ; Hitzig denies that they can be from the same 
hand. Ewald makes the prophecy in chapter xxi. the earlier ; Hitzig proves 
it to be later. Koppe, Paulus, Eichorn, and Rosenmuller, look upon it as 
a vaticinium ex eventu ; Gesenius , Ewald, and the other later writers as a 
real prophecy. The twenty-third chapter is ascribed by Movers to Jeremiah; 
by Eichorn and Bosenmiiiler to an unknown writer later than Isaiah ; by 
Gesenius and De Wette to Isaiah himself; by Ewald to a younger contemporary 
and disciple of the prophet. The continuous prophecy contained in chapters 
xxiv. — xxvii. Knobel shows to have been written in Palestine about the 
beginning of the Babylonish exile ; Gesenius in Babylon, towards the end of 
the captivity, and by "the author of chapters xl. — lxvi. ; Umbreit at the same 
time but by a different author ; Gramberg after the return from exile ; 
Ewald just before the invasion of Egypt by Cambyses ; Yatke in the period 
of the Maccabees ; Hitzig in Assyria just before the fall of Nineveh ; while 
liosenmuller, in the last edition of his Scholia, ascribes it to Isaiah himself. 
Chapters xxvii. — xxxiii. are supposed by Koppe to contain many distinct 
prophecies of different authors, and by Hitzig several successive compositions 
of one and the same author ; while most other writers consider them as 
forming a continuous whole. This is regarded by Gesenius and Hitzig, 



158 THE NEW AND THE OLD METHODS, 



like those astronomical investigations in which it was at 
last found that the observers had been measuring only 
the errors of their instruments.* Nor were the earlier 
attempts at reconstruction of the text more satisfactory, 
while the critic's conception of prophecy as a phenomenon 
of the human mind was limited by analogies and illustra- 
tions from the intellectual experiences of the eighteen th 
century, which we now know to have been quite inadequate, 
and to have excluded from observation other experiences, 
deeper but not less real or less human than those were. 
These new critics of the eighteenth century were, in spite 
of their desire to be positive, too frequently carried away 
by theories to which they required the facts to conform, or 
else — if they were quite intractable — they rejected them 
even though with no better reason than that they had a 
' critical feeling ' that they were not genuine. Their ortho- 
dox opponents — though in many respects not less addicted 
to narrow theories — had this great advantage, that they 
were impelled by their religious feeling to maintain the 
authenticity of the book, and therefore to insist upon 
taking all the facts, and not merely such a selection from 
them as would fit a pre-conceived theory; while they were 
obliged to employ all their resources of learning and argu- 
ment to meet the reasoning by which those facts were 
brought into question. As the controversy went on, which 
it did with great activity, the results became apparent in a 
gradual and important modification and enlargement of 
view on both sides : and the investigations and arguments 
of such writers as Gesenius, Hitzig, and Ewald, on the one 
hand, and Moller, Hengstenberg, Havernick, and Alexander, 
on the other, seemed — when I published the first edition of 
this book in 1853 — to justify my expectation that we 
were approaching the final settlement of the question. 
But since then there has been a pause, if not a re- 

notwithstanding the objections of previous critics, as a genuine production 
of Isaiah ; but Ewald doubts whether it may not be the work of a disciple. 
Most of the writers of this school join chapters xxxiv. and xxxv. together, as 
an unbroken text, but Hitzig no less confidently puts them asunder. Rosen- 
miiller, De Wette, and others, set these chapters down as evidently written 
by the author of chapters xl. — lxvi. ; while Ewald on the other hand main- 
tained that their identity is disproved by a difference of style and diction.' 
* Herschel's Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, p. 278, ed. 1830. 



BOTH DEFECTIVE. 



i59 



action, instead of a farther progress to such a settlement. 
Professor Delitzsch has thrown his great learning into the 
scale of an extreme recognition of miraculous prediction 
throughout the writings of Isaiah, and Mr. Cheyne adopts, 
with scarcely any modification, Ewald's treatment of 
the text, while we hardly hear that there are still critics 
who do not accept the methods or conclusions of either 
school. Yet there are those who believe that each of these 
schools has adopted a faulty and defective method of criti- 
cism, and they cannot wonder that each has finally refused 
to be convinced by the other, nor doubt that more satis- 
factory results may still be expected from a thorough appli- 
cation of a better method. There are some minds which 
are so content with the logical argument that the Almighty 
Lawgiver can suspend his own laws, and may be expected to 
do so for adequate reasons, as to overlook the necessity for 
the farther inquiry as to the grounds on which ecclesiastical 
tradition assumes — instead of proving — the fact that such 
miraculous interferences have occurred ; while there are 
others to whom the charm of a speculative hypothesis is 
such that they do not inquire very narrowly into the in- 
ductions and verifications on which its worth must depend. 
But neither of these is the true method, at once scientific 
and historical, by which the question will eventually be 
solved, in as far as a solution is possible. The opposite, but 
equally arbitrary, modes of appealing in any difficulty either 
to a miracle or a reconstruction of the text, to explain the 
obscurer facts of the case, have again and again been found 
unnecessary as we have learnt how to look at those facts 
in a stronger and clearer light. On the one hand we are 
perceiving that in proportion as we can discover the law of 
God's working in events where our predecessors only saw 
his power, and can consequently perceive the resemblances 
between God's former and present manner of governing 
the world where they saw chiefly the differences, and there- 
fore supposed a miracle where we recognize a law, this does 
not dishonour but honour God, and instead of weakening 
our recognition of the reality of God's presence and power 
among us, does in truth add a new and stronger evidence 
of it to ourselves and to others. And at the same time 



i6o GERMAN AND ENGLISH METHODS: 



we have been learning that in order to sustain the assertion 
that the Hebrew prophet was a real poet, orator, and man, 
we must make a complete induction of the facts of Hebrew 
literature and history, instead of contenting ourselves with 
analogies from our own or any other age and nation. But 
to do this we must begin by taking the text as it is, as the 
basis of our investigations, and not first reconstruct it in 
accordance with such analogies. 

We can perhaps hardly expect the Germans, to whom 
the work has hitherto been mostly left, to carry this con- 
troversy much further than they have already done. But 
here, as in the classical literatures, English criticism has 
still something to do, if we will understand and judge of 
the German investigations for ourselves, instead of merely 
reproducing them. No Englishman approaches Ewald in 
his knowledge of the facts of the Hebrew language, litera- 
ture, and genius ; and perhaps no Englishman except the late 
Professor Maurice has entered more deeply than Ewald into 
the spirit of Hebrew prophecy ; yet this makes it the more 
instructive to see how, in all questions of criticism, Ewald's 
' shaping spirit of imagination ' is so strong that its creations 
have to him all the reality of historical facts. Thus- on 
the subject before us he says* that though we cannot trace 
the history of the existing collections of the prophecies by 
external evidence, yet we may by help of that which is 
internal, or derived from analogy, arrive at some extremely 
weighty truths, which present themselves to us as scattered 
marks and vestiges of that history. And then he proceeds 
to give — not some of those general and philosophical views 
in which he is such a master but — a series of historical or 
quasi-historical statements as to the period at the end of 
the exile of which we have no ' external ' accounts. He 
says that ' at that time a multitude of new prophecies, 
often of great poetical beauty, and written as it were on 
thousands of flying sheets, were published and collected ; and 
that it is easy to understand how this flood of new writings 
soon made it seem expedient to make and circulate new 
selections of the most important of the old works on pro- 
phecy.' And he then gives in great detail a narrative 

* Die Propheten, i. 55 — 60. 



BOTH REALLY WANTED. 161 

of the steps by which one of these selectors arranged the 
Book of Isaiah as we now have it, even pointing out two 
little passages which the said selector (' whom one may 
easily give credit for being something of an author himself), 
added to give a finish to certain sections of the work. 
Parts of this narrative are qualified with such words as 
'• probably,' ' easily conceived,' &c, but others are not less 
supported by the countervailing c manifestly,' or ' undeni- 
ably ; ' and the whole is such a statement of events which 
happened, without being recorded, 2,300 years ago, as no 
Englishman would venture to make, with all the documents 
before him, of the manner in which the works of any 
author of his own generation were composed and arranged. 
Ewald has (as his readers know) farther applied this sup- 
posed power of recovering the past to a reconstruction of 
the whole Hebrew literature upon which he has based his 
History of Israel and his versions of the Prophets and the 
Psalms, the whole of which he has re-arranged as they 
c must ' have been. And though even the Germans think 
Ewald fanciful, yet in the main question of the genuineness 
of Isaiah's writings Gesenius, Hitzig, and Knobel are quite 
as hypothetical as Ewald, though their differences as to 
minor points (as on that of the authorship of chapter xii.) 
indicate an element of individual fancy in their conclusions. 
These things are interesting to the student of the national 
distinctions of the human mind, but I point them out here 
because I believe that we must understand them, in order 
to understand this question of the Isaian, or non-Isaian, 
authorship of these chapters. The Germans are so learned, 
and their insight is often so deep, that we might be tempted 
to take their authority on this point, though their argu- 
ments seem so inconclusive. But such instances as that 
from Ewald may serve to warn us what are the proper 
limits of their authority, and where we must begin to judge 
for ourselves. They offer us diamonds and glass beads as 
of equal value : we may know the difference, though they 
alone know where to find the former.* In the case before 

* M. de Bunsen says, ' Modern criticism has been left to the Germans, for 
whom reality has no charm.' And of ' the Protestant critical school in 
Germany,' he adds — ' what they know how to handle best is thought, the 
ideal part of history; what is farthest from their grasp is reality.' — Mippo- 

M 



1 62 THE QUESTION OF GENUINENESS. 



us I believe that in order to investigate this question of 
the authorship of the book of Isaiah we must throw aside 
one half of the German criticism, and heartily avail our- 
selves of the other half. We must take Ewald's profound 
and comprehensive view of Hebrew prophecy and of what, 
therefore, a prophet could say and do ; and Gesenius's and 
Knobel's lucid expositions of the history and politics of 
Isaiah's times ; and then we must study the facts with our 
own eyes, though by help of the light these critics shed on 
them. 

The grounds on which it is held that the disputed 
chapters have been erroneously attributed to Isaiah are, 
that the writers were manifestly living in the time of the 
Great Captivity, the events and circumstances of which 
they describe or allude to — not as ideally conceived but — 
as actually existing around them, and (as might be expected 
if that were so) that the language, style, and ideas, of 
these prophecies is different from that of the unquestioned 
writings of Isaiah. There are cases in which we may 
decide on the authorship of a book upon such internal 
evidence, but where there is external evidence also we must 
start from that, and not from the other. The practical 
difference is very great. The book before us is not 
an anonymous manuscript recently found in a Syrian 
monastery, the author of which has to be discovered by 
conjecture resting upon the merely internal evidence of 
the volume itself : it has come down to us by tradition 
from a remote, yet properly historical, period as the work 
of Isaiah ; and though in one sense it may be said 
that the evidence supplied by such a tradition is very 
inconclusive, still it must be remembered that it is the 
only kind of evidence which we have of the authorship of 
almost any other ancient, or even modern, book ; and that 
in all such cases we justly hold that the declared author is 
the real one until the contrary is proved, and that the 
burden of proof lies with him who questions this received 
authorship. If we proceeded on the contrary assumption 
we should be involved in a hopeless scepticism which 

lytus and his Age, ii. 228, 239. M. de Bunsen did not, however, make my 
application of his maxims. 



SUPPOSED HISTORICAL ALLUSIONS. 163 



would make all history impossible. And here therefore 
the question we have to ask ourselves is not whether Ave 
can discover, or imagine, an author of these prophecies 
against Babylon, but whether Ave can understand and realize 
them as intelligible writings of the man Isaiah. 

First, then, as to the supposed historical allusions to the 
times of the Captivity : — The traditional and orthodox"" 
interpretation of the chapters before us — and to these I 
here confine myself — is, that they are a specific prediction 
of the taking of Babylon by the Medes and Persians about 
two hundred years after the words were uttered by Isaiah; 
and it is confidently added that the historical events are 
anticipated with such accuracy of detail as can only be 
explained by miracle. The rationalists admit the facts of 
these precise historical details, but maintain that they 
prove, not a miracle but that the real date of the prophecy 
is contemporary with the events. Whereas the thoughtful 
reader who examines the text as it is in itself, and not 
through the medium of traditions and conjectures, will, I 
am bold to say, find no such specific predictions and his- 
torical details. And this is the real issue he has to try : 
whether the title of Isaiah to this prophecy can be 
maintained by the method of ordinary historical criticism, 
and without claiming for him a miraculous power of pre- 
diction. 

There is just the same profound insight into political 
principles, the same acquaintance with the general political 
relations of the foreign nations, and the same foresight of 
their consequences, which Isaiah exhibits in the prophecies 
admitted to be his ; and there is the same absence of 
literal detail, or the same evidence that the detail is not 
historical but ideal, from its not corresponding precisely 
with actual events. The proofs of miraculous prediction 
exist only in the mind of the commentators, who have 
endeavoured to confirm the great truth that Isaiah is a 

* Convenient as the terms, ' orthodox' and 'rationalist,' are for making a 
general statement, I should have feared to countenance, hy the use of them, 
the "base practice of pointing arguments with nicknames ; hut I find them 
employed as honourable titles — the one by .Dr. Alexander, in tbe Introduction 
to his Commentary, p. xxxi. ; and the other hy M. de Bunsen, in Hippolytiis and 
his Age, i. 164. 

M 2 



1 64 COMMENTS TAKEN FOR THE TEXT. 



prophet, and filled with that ' spirit of wisdom and under- 
standing ' which he prized as being the ' spirit of Jehovah,' 
by trivial fancies of their own, which lower him towards 
the level of the muttering wizards whom he denounced. 
Grotius, indeed, saw better, and connected this, like the 
rest of Isaiah's prophecies, with contemporary events. And 
it would be hard to understand why the rationalists were 
not content to do the same, if we did not remember that 
when they first entered on the subject their conception of 
the human side of prophecy was so limited that they could 
only explain such passages as the vision in the sixth 
chapter, and the march of the Assyrian army in the tenth, 
by supposing them to be the one an apologue, and the 
other an historical statement ; and that though their views 
have been gradually enlarging, they have still, like other 
commentators, what may be called a professional and un- 
conscious prejudice in favour of the traditions handed 
down to them. This habit of accepting traditional com- 
ments as if they were a part of the text, is common with 
rationalist no less than orthodox writers, on every part of 
the Bible, and the uncritical conclusions of Jewish and 
ecclesiastical tradition have in the course of ages become 
so inveterate that they still retain their hold on minds 
which have abandoned the belief out of which they have 
grown. They form a large element of popular scepticism, 
no less than of popular orthodoxy as to what is assumed 
to be found in the Bible ; and the rationalist commentator, 
no less than the orthodox, is but too often content with 
the position which the natural philosopher accepted before 
the days of Bacon, in which facts are assumed on popular 
report without actual observation, and then ingenious and 
elaborate explanations of them developed by the logic of the 
philosopher. And this habit has, if I mistake not, on this 
occasion, led to the taking for granted, first, the orthodox 
assumption, and then the rationalist explanation of it ; 
though each is contrary to the facts of the text. If there 
are obscurities and difficulties, this is only what might be 
expected in a book of such antiquity, and with such small 
remains of contemporary- history to throw light on its 
allusions ; and in the present state of our knowledge, it 



THE TEXT AS IT IS. 



165 



may be necessary to leave some of them unexplained, or to 
explain them conjecturally. But that they need such slash- 
ing criticism, or that its employment does not involve us in 
greater difficulties than it helps us out of, I am unable to 
see. If the text is corrupt, let it be emended ; but let us 
see what it is, and what it ought to be, each distinctly, 
and not blended together in a luminous mist of the higher 
criticism. And let us remember that what it ought 
to be is not to be ascertained by deciding how we, 
here in England in the nineteenth century, should have 
written it, or in what form it would be most easily intelligible 
to us ; for the probability is rather that such would not 
have been the precise form in which a Hebrew prophet 
would have written between two and three thousand 
years ago. 

Whatever difficulty appears in verses 1, 2, 3, 4, of chapter 
xiv. would, I think, have been solved by anticipation, in 
accepting verses 10, 11, 12, of chapter xi., as the genuine 
and intelligible words of Isaiah ; only, that in the passage 
now before us, the captivity from which the people of Israel 
are to be brought back is said to be endured in Babylon, 
and at the hands of the king of Babylon ; whereas in the 
times of Isaiah the head of the Assyrian empire was usually 
called king of Assyria, and lived at Nineveh, and Babylon 
was a dependency, under his viceroy or vassal-king. Here, 
in fact, lies the real difficulty, to which all the others are 
but make-weights. To this then let us address ourselves, 
by examining the text as it is, and not as it ought to be. 

The prophecy, as it is, then, consists of chap. xiii. and 
the first twenty-seven verses of chap, xiv., its termination 
being marked by the title of the next prophecy, as its com- 
mencement is by its own title, which states that it is by 
Isaiah the son of Amos ; while its position in the book 
indicates its date to be towards the end of the reign of 
Ahaz. In the last words (verse 25) of the prophecy, the 
impending destruction of the great Assyrian power is fore- 
told in language corresponding with that in which Isaiah 
had constantly on previous occasions denounced the same 
heathen oppressor ; while the rest of the denunciation, 
though perfectly congruous with this its own close, differs 



i66 



THE KING OF BABYLON. 



from those previous prophecies in calling the oppressor 
' king of Babylon,' and foretelling the overthrow of that his 
capital, whereas, they call him ' king of Assyria,' and speak 
only of his arm)' being destroyed. But Isaiah's authority 
for a contemporary historical fact, is as good as that of any 
other record of his times. If the latter contradict and 
disprove a statement purporting to be from him, we must 
balance the evidence and decide accordingly : but the mere 
absence of directly confirmatory statements would not 
throw doubt on the genuineness of an allusion by Isaiah 
to a fact probable in itself and uncontradicted, even though 
our resources for confirmation or contradiction were not so 
fragmentary as they are. And therefore the simplest and 
yet the most critical conclusion will be, that if Isaiah in one 
place calls the oppressor of Israel 'king of Assyria,'* and 
in another ' king of Babylon,' it was because he either 
called himself by both these titles, or at least was signifi- 
cantly pointed out to the prophet's own countrymen by 
the latter name ;t and that if Isaiah sometimes describes 
the Jews as carried captives into various lands, and some- 
times as living in slavery at Babylon, it was because a 
large proportion of the captives taken in the time of Ahaz 
or of Hezekiah, had fallen into the hands of the luxurious 
and cruel inhabitants of that city. The only known fact 
in opposition to those necessarily involved in these expres- 
sions of Isaiah is, that Nineveh was the capital of Tiglath- 
Pileser and his successors. It has, indeed, been suggested | 
that about this time Pul, whom Berosus calls ' King of the 
Chaldseans,' was properly king of Babylon, and had, for 

* The late Professor Maurice, writing to me in 1851, says — ' The fact I am 
chiefly confident about in Isaiah is that the description in the 14th chapter 
exactly answers to Sennacherib, and not the least to Nebuchadnezzar or 
Belshazzar.' 

The Dean of "Westminster observes — Lectures on the Jewish Church, ii. 
480, note — that my argument here ' seems to be very strong for supposing 
that by the ' King ' in Isaiah xiv. 4, is meant the King of Assyria.' 

f ' King of Delhi ' is the name usually given by Indian historians and 
political writers in the last century — men living in the country and familiar 
with their subject — to the sovereign who still sat on the throne of Timour, 
though I believe he was never so called by the natives, but only ' the King.' 

% By Professor Finzi, though with some reserve of his own judgment : — 
Mcerche per lo studio delV Antichitd Assira di Felice Finzi, p. 35. Pul is men- 
tioned in 2 Kings xv. 19, and 1 Chron. v. 26 : but none of his Inscriptions 
have been found, and some Assyriologists identify him with Tiglath-Pileser. 



HEBREW NOTICES OF BABYLON. 167 



the time, reduced Assyria to a province subject to himself 
as king of Babylon. But, in any case, there is no abso- 
lute contradiction or incompatibility of facts ; it would 
be more correct to say that we have two statements which 
stand apart from each other, and in apparent opposition, 
and to which our meagre and fragmentary historical 
records supply no third statement which might reconcile 
the others, in the way in which a third statement so often 
does in all histories. Probable and approximate evidence, 
indeed, we have. Micah, the contemporary of Isaiah, 
makes Babylon, and not Nineveh, the city to which the 
daughter of Zion shall be led captive.""' Shinar, or 
Babylonia, is one of the lands from which Isaiah foretells a 
redemption of the remnant of Israel and Judah.t Babylon 
was one of the cities from which inhabitants were supplied 
to the cities of Israel, and to which therefore the Israelites 
were deported, in the sixth year of Hezekiah.^ Babylon, 
though at this time inferior to Nineveh inasmuch as the 
latter was the seat of the government, seems to have been 
the right arm of the Assyrian king, its palaces inhabited by 
his chief princes, and its vast population recruiting his 
armies, and consequently sharing largely in the treasures 
and the captives of the countries they helped to conquer. 
It had apparently an importance something like that of 
Pasargadse after Cyrus had made Ekbatana his capital, or 
Ecbatana when Darius resided at Susa ; of Delhi during 
the reigns of those Mogul emperors who lived at Agra, or 
of York in the days of our forefathers, and of Edinburgh 
and Dublin in our own time ; § and it was, in truth, as its 

* Micali iv. 10, which Gesenius refers to in his chronological tahle as proof 
that the Assyrian kings sent their prisoners to Babylcn at this time. 

f Chap. xi. 11, where the LXX. render the word by BafivXwvia, as they 
do by yrj Baf3v\u>vog in Zech. v. 11. 

X 2 Kings xvii. 23, 24. 

§ Compare, too, the following: — 1 The ' preponderance of the Persians was 
at last complete ; though the Medes always continued to be the second nation 
in the empire, after the Persians, properly so called ; and by early Greek 
writers the great enemy in the East is often called ' the Mede,' as well as 
' the Persian.' Ekbatana always continued to be one of the capital cities, 
and the usual summer residence of the kings of Persia ; Susa on the Choaspes, 
on the Kissian plain farther southward, and east of the Tigris, being their 
winter abode.' — Grote's History of Greece, iv. 251. 4 Medising, i. e. embracing 
the cause of the Persians.' — Ibid. v. 77. 



68 



ASSYRIAN NOTICES. 



earlier and later history shows, the more permanent of the 
two centres of the great Mesopotamian empires.* The 
traditions of its origin, of the nations that had sprung 
from it, and of the meaning of its name, gave it a special 
importance in the eyes of Isaiah and the people he 
addressed, as the type and embodiment of worldly arbitrary 
power, in contrast with the spiritual and law-governed 
kingdom of Jehovah : and, therefore, he might well name 
it (in a fashion of which we shall have other instances), t 
instead of Nineveh, which he never mentions, and of which 
his non-mention when he denounces so many other cities, 
would be a great puzzle, but for this explanation of it ; for 
he must have known that the great king of Assyria had a 
city as well as an army. To use an illustration from the 
interpreters of the Cuneiform inscriptions, Babylon is a 
monogram or ideograph, employed by Isaiah to represent 
the capital of the Assyrian empire. And so the Euphrates, 
not the Tigris, is the river which is to overflow the land 
of Immanuel :$ it was to Babylon, not to Nineveh, that 
Isaiah warned Hezekiah that his sons and wealth would be 
carried ; Babylon, not Nineveh, supplies the forces which 
besiege Tyre ; § and to those who are content to take the 
text as it is, I may further quote the denunciations of 
Babylon in chapter xxi. and the latter half of the book. 
So adduced, they are facts supporting the fact before us : 
in the other mode of employing them, they are parts of an 
argument in a circle, in which the hypothesis as to the 
meaning or origin of those chapters sustains the like 
hypothesis as to this one ; and the former in its turn does 
the like service for the latter. 

And though it may still be premature to draw final 
conclusions from the Assyrian annals, yet the versions or 
summaries of the Assyriologists present correspondences 
with this, which I call Isaiah's own account, which it is 
difficult to conceive to be illusory, and not historical. They 
are to this effect : — Tiglath-Pileser calls himself by a title 

* Brandis calls Sargon ' the ruler of the double kingdom of Nineveh and 
Babylon.' Lenormant and Finzi point out the great importance of Babylon 
during the Assyrian supremacy. — Ricerche, p. 23. 

7 Chapters xxv. 10, andxxxiv. 5, 6, where see farther. 

X Isaiah vii. 20 ; viii. 7, 8. § Isaiah xxiii. 13. 



1 THE CHALDEES' EXCELLENCY: 169 



equivalent to king of Babylon. Sargon styles himself ' the 
great king, the king of Assyria, and the lord paramount (or 
the high-priest) of Babylon,' as kings both before and after 
him did. This addition he seems to have taken in the 
twelfth year of his reign, when he inscribed the name of 
Babylon among his own titles, and that of the Babylonian 
Nebo in a conspicuous place in the series of gods to whom 
his palace was newly dedicated, both having been previously 
wanting. And at this date his annals say that he conquered 
and expelled Merodach-Baladan, who had been twelve 
years de facto king of Babylon, where Sargon thenceforth 
reigned in his own or his son's name, till near his death. 
And they afterwards relate — evidently as a matter of 
great importance — how he himself went to Babylon, to 
the sanctuary of Bel, and there ' took the hands ' of the 
great lord, the august god Merodach : they recount in 
detail the great treasures of all kinds — gold, silver, ivory, 
precious stones, coloured stuffs, ebony, cypress, and cedar 
woods — which he carried thither ; and also mention that 
he there received the homage and tribute of various kings. 
On, or just before, the death of Sargon, Merodach-Baladan, 
with the help of allies from Susiana or Etam, recovered 
Babylon ; but was speedily driven out again by Senna- 
cherib, who plundered Babylon, as well as all 1 the for- 
tresses of the Chaldseans,' carrying away gold, silver, and 
precious stones, gods, men and women, chariots, horses, 
camels, and mules, ' altogether a vast booty.' Sennacherib 
then appointed a viceroy (his brother according to 
Berosus), at Babylon : he had to reconquer it a second 
time from Merodach-Baladan, in his fourth year • when 
he appointed his son Assur-Nadin (Asordanius in Berosus) 
as his viceroy.""" 

Berosus relates a conquest of Babylon by the Medes and 
a dynasty of Chaldaean kings long before these times : he 
also calls Pul and Merodach-Baladan Chaldseans :t and 

* Hincks, in Transactions of the Irish Academy, xxii. pt. 2, p. 40 ; pt. 4, 
p. 364, ff. ; and in Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 140, 353, 620. 
Rawlinson's Outline, pp. 19, 25, 26; Commentary ( 1850), p. 67. Oppert, 
Inscriptions des Sargonides, pp. 30, 41. Schrader, Keilinschriften u. d. A. T. } 
pp. 128, 220, 265. 

f Bunsen's Vet. Script. Fragmenta, appended to Aegyptens Stelle, iii. 



1 7 o 



BABYLON SACKED. 



the constant appearance of the ' Chaldseans' in all the 
Cuneiform inscriptions has, I presume, ended the old doubts 
as to the historical existence of this race in the days of 
Isaiah, so that there can be no question that Babylon might 
without impropriety have been called ' the beauty of the 
Chaldees' excellency,' by Isaiah, without his being conscious 
that his impassioned words would be still more applicable 
to a great Chaldsean dynasty afterwards to arise at Babylon 
than to the events he saw or anticipated in his own day. 

So too of the fulfilment of the prophecy : — Grotius said, 
that if the Assyrian annals of Abydenus, and the Babylonian 
of Berosus were extant, we should find that between the 
times of Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar the woes here 
denounced against Babylon did in effect come to pass 
through some invasion or invasions of the Medes, who 
about this date became independent of Assyria and very 
powerful under Deioces and his successor. And now the 
originals of those annals tell us that Merodach-Baladan 
wrested Babylon, once at least, from each of the kings 
Sargon and Sennacherib ; and that in both instances he 
did it by help of an army from Elam (or Susa), which 
nation is joined by Isaiah in chapter xxi. with the Medes 
as the destined conquerors of Babylon, while Media appears 
in juxta-position with Elam among the conquests of both 
Sargon and Sennacherib, the latter going to invade the 
Medes immediately after his second defeat of Merodach- 
Baladan, and indicating their power by the notice that 
none of his ancestors had received tribute from them as 
he had done." 5 ' 5 " Let us put these things together, and 
remember what a great and rich city Babylon was, and in 
what fashion it would be sacked by Merodach-Baladan, 
and his ' Susianian allies : ' let us consider that a great 
part of the same inhabitants who suffered on these occa- 
sions because they were the subjects of the great king, 
would be treated but little better when he found them 
with their allegiance transferred to his rival : and then we 
shall be able to judge what farther information we require, 

* Rawlinson, Outline, pp. 18, 19, 20, 25 ; and Commentary, p. 61 ; Hincks, 
in Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 140, 142, 145 ; Oppert, Inscriptions, 
pp. 28, 46, 49 ; Schrader, Keilinschriften, pp. 220, 225, 264. 



BABYLON A SYMBOLIC NAME. 



17 1 



in order to decide whether it is impossible that Isaiah 
could have written the words before us. If Sir Henry 
Kawlinson's belief that Sargon was a usurper, who expelled 
the dynasty of Tiglath-Pileser by a military revolution, 
should be substantiated — either with or without Professor 
Finzi's suggestion as to Pul — this would have been of itself 
a striking fulfilment of Isaiah's denunciations, whether the 
literal Babylon, or only the empire which is symbolized to 
the Jew, were subverted on the occasion : and the position 
of the prophecy in the book would indicate its date to be 
in Tiglath-Pileser' s reign. In any case, we need not limit 
ourselves so much as Grotius does : it is not necessary to 
assume that this prophecy was fulfilled more literally and 
definitely than many others of which we have the historical 
counterpart, and see that they were far from having such 
a literal fulfilment. It is improbable that Babylon was 
utterly destroyed by Sargon or his immediate successors ; 
but it is a fact that it was not so destroyed by Cyrus, but 
perished by a decay extending through centuries. In 
order to enter into the spirit of Hebrew prophecy and 
understand its meaning we must consider that the prophet 
is enunciating universal propositions, but that instead of 
employing generalizations and abstractions as we should 
now do, he takes Babylon, or Moab, or Edom, or Israel, 
in the concrete, and uses this concrete image as the diagram 
by which to illustrate his proposition. The diagram is 
sometimes more, sometimes less, accurately drawn, accord- 
ing to the knowledge or skill of the individual prophet ; 
but he who looks for the meaning and truth of the 
prophecy in the literal correspondence of some historical 
event, falls into the same kind of error as the schoolboy 
who tries to prove a proposition of Euclid by measuring 
the parts of the diagram, and cannot apprehend how the 
proposition itself is equally true, and equally important, 
whether the circles and lines are drawn with ruler and 
compasses, or by the most awkward hand. 

Isaiah looked on the main fortress of that kingdom 
of Force, which it was the mission of his life to denounce, 
as the really impotent rival of the kingdom of Righteous- 
ness, though the instrument for punishing the nations, and 



THE KINGDOM OF FORCE. 



especially Jehovah's chosen nation, for their rebellions 
against his laws. He knew that numbers of his country- 
men (of Israel and of Judah) were at that moment the 
slaves of the cruel and luxurious Babylonians, and he may 
have anticipated that still more of the like punishment 
would be inflicted on those who yet remained in their own 
land. But he was appointed to preach not only judgment, 
but pardon and release, to his people : and while he medi- 
tated upon the events of his times, and of the times before 
him, and studied them in the light of that vision which 
had revealed to him the Loed of hosts and the reality of 
his dominion, he saw, — not by miracle, but by that insight 
into the principles governing the rise and fall of empires, 
which was a higher and more spiritual gift of God to him 
than any such miraculous power could have been, — that 
the Assyrian dominion would be overthrown by the less 
degenerate and more warlike nations from the north who 
neither cared for gold nor spared children, and whom with 
his wonted concreteness of style he here specifies as the 
Medes, and in chapter xxi. as the Medes and Persians : he 
saw that this Babylon with all it symbolized would be 
utterly destroyed, and the Jewish nation completely freed 
from its bondage. He saw all this in its idea, aud accord- 
ingly set it forth in all the greatness and absoluteness of 
the idea ; while he believed that he himself should see 
such an accomplishment of it as was suited to his own 
times, that the successor of Ahaz would reign in righteous- 
ness over a people delivered from the thraldom of Assyria 
and Babylon, and that Babylon would meanwhile be 
humbled to the dust. But only a small part of this idea 
could be possibly embodied in any single set of historical 
facts. Only in the course of ages could the whole idea be 
evolved : there was much more of it brought out in the 
days of Cyrus than in the time of Hezekiah ; but still the 
discovery was but partial, and the accomplishment had — 
nay has — still to go on. It is not necessary for me to add 
to the above notices of the Assyrian annals, an abstract 
and reconciliation of what remains to us of the history 
of Assyria and Babylon. In the commentators, the Assyri- 
ologists, and their original authorities, the student must 



THE ARGUMENT FROM LANGUAGE. 173 



necessarily examine the subject at large, and for himself : 
my ambition is only to help him to remove some obstacles 
which, if I mistake not, stand in his way. And I would 
ask him to judge for himself, and without waiting for leave 
from any commentators, whether, taking the text as it is, 
and interpreting its historical allusions by the ordinary 
methods and rules of criticism, and availing himself of such 
information as the remaining historical records supply, the 
state of things, internal and external — ideas and facts — 
supposed in the present prophecy is, or is not, something 
to the effect above stated. 

Then, as to the language, style, and spirit requiring us 
to give a later date to these chapters — to which I still 
confine myself for the present : — The question is not one 
of Hebrew scholarship, properly so called ; and though the 
scholar, thoroughly familiar with the original, has no doubt 
a sense trained to the perception of shades of difference of 
language which cannot be preserved in a translation, still 
it does not require a knowledge of Hebrew to enable the 
reader to put the case, and to judge what would be the 
possible results ; he can form a reasonable conclusion upon 
it, just as a lawyer can in an ecclesiastical or commercial 
inquiry, though he is neither a clergyman nor a merchant. 

As to language, no Hebrew scholar would say that the 
undisputed prophecies of Isaiah are archaic in words and 
grammar in comparison with those now before us, so that 
the one may be distinguished from the other as the Troilus 
and Cressida of Chaucer can be distinguished from that of 
Shakspeare. At the utmost, the question on this point 
stands thus : — Gesenius and Hitzig each specify five words 
or usages in these chapters as proper to the period of the 
Captivity and not to that of Isaiah ; but only one of these 
is specified by both critics : Knobel gives a longer list, but 
it contains none of the instances of Gesenius, and only 
one of Hitzig' s : and then Delitzsch, speaking with no 
less authority as a Hebrew scholar than any of these, says 
that these words or usages do not require the explanation 
of the later date but may have properly belonged to 
that of Isaiah ; and Mr. Cheyne, though himself holding to 
the later date, says that f the argument from phraseology 



i 7 4 



THE ARGUMENT FROM STYLE. 



is merely a subsidiary one.' We have before us the small 
remains of the literature of a nation whose habits of 
thought and therefore of writing, are removed from ours 
by the distance of 2,500 years, and of Asia from Europe, 
and of all the differences therein implied ; the language 
became a dead language about 2,300 years ago ; and the 
still remaining books, habitually used in religious wor- 
ship, must have been liable to such modernizations as 
books in popular use do not escape, even in our days of 
printing. And the question is whether, under these cir- 
cumstances, and with the very limited means of comparison 
which such, and such small, remains of the literature 
afford, it is possible for certain very learned Hebraists to 
pronounce that the short .prophecy before us was written 
not 2,500, but 2,300 years ago ; because, as they assert — 
what other eminent scholars deny — they find a few words 
or phrases belonging to the later period. There can 
be but one answer — that nothing is proved by such 
evidence. 

Nor is the argument against the genuineness of this 
portion of the book from its style or spirit of more weight : 
even if the differences were far greater than they actually 
are, the argument would be fallacious, because it neces- 
sarily assumes that which it has to prove, and excludes 
the facts which go against it. If we assume that the 
standard of Shakspeare's style is to be found in the tragic 
scenes of Lear or Hamlet we can easily show that the 
comic scenes are interpolations, and that still less could 
he have written Twelfth Night or Henry IV. ; and the 
like conclusions as to the genuineness or non-genuineness 
of all the other plays might be drawn from their intellectual 
differences or resemblances. But when we admit all these 
to have been in fact written by Shakspeare, then the dif- 
ferences of style and sentiment are seen to be but diverse 
expressions of one mind, and are understood accordingly. 
And how can any one assert — in the absence of all evidence 
of the fact — that Isaiah during a career of fifty years 
must have written so exclusively in one style, and with 
one habit of mind, that we are able to pronounce what 
prophecies are, and what are not, from his hand in a 



EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 



'75 



volume wholly attributed to him by tradition?* We know 
that even in this case of the plays of Shakspeare in our 
own living language, and little more than two hundred 
years old, we are guided far more by a £ W. S.' on the old 
title-page, and by other external helps, than by any internal 
criticism, in deciding on the genuineness of the text. If 
we had nothing but a priori reasoning to guide us as to 
the genuineness of these prophecies of Isaiah we could say 
no more than this : — ' The lesson must be learnt, hard 
and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach of 
critical acumen will, of itself, enable us to discriminate 
fancy from reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of 

* The Canon of Ezra may not have so much witness to its trustworthiness 
as that of Thrasyllus ; hut the observations of Mr. Grote on the possibility of 
deciding- on the genuineness of certain of Plato's Dialogues by their style and 
spirit may be applied so literally to the like question as to these prophecies of 
Isaiah that I venture to support myself by his great authority. He says — 
* I have reviewed the doctrines of several recent critics who discard this 
Canon [of ThrasyllusJ as unworthy of trust, and who set up for themselves a 
type of what Plato must have been, derived from a certain number of items 
in the Canon — rejecting the remaining as unconformable to their hypothetical 
type .... The 'internal reasons' upon which they justify their rejection 
of various dialogues are only another phrase for expressirg their own different 
theories respecting Plato as a philosopher and a writer. For my part, I 
decline to discard any item of the Thrasyllean Canon, upon such evidence as 
they produce : I think it a safer and more philosophical proceeding to accept 
the entire Canon, and to accommodate my general theory of Plato (in so far 
as I am able to form one) to each and all of its contents. Considering that 
Plato's period of philosophical composition extended over fifty years, and that 
the circumstances of his life are most imperfectly known to us — it is surely 
hazardous to limit the range of his varieties on the faith of a critical repug- 
nance, not merely subjective and fallible, but of modern growth : to assume, 
as basis of reasoning, the admiration raised by a few of the finest dialogues — 
and then to argue that no composition inferior to this admired type, or un- 
like it in doctrine or handling, can possibly be the work of Plato.' — Plato, by 
George Grote, vol. i. ch. v. pp. 206, 207. And again — ' While adhering, 
therefore, to the Canon of Thrasyllus I do not think myself obliged to make 
out that Plato is either like to himself or equal to himself, or consistent with 
himself throughout all the dialogues included therein, and throughout the 
period of fifty years during which these dialogues were composed. Plato is 
to be found in all and each of the dialogues, not in an imaginary type 
abstracted from some to the exclusion of the rest. The critics reverence so 
much this type of their own creation, that they insist on bringing out a 
result consistent with it, either by interpretation, specially contrived, or by 
repudiating what will not harmonize. Such sacrifice of the inherent di- 
versity and separate individuality, of the dialogues to the maintenance of a 
supposed unity of type, style, or purpose, appears to me an error.' — lb. p. 210. 
The marginal note to this last passage is — ' Any true theory of Plato must 
recognize all his varieties, and must be based upon all the works of the Canon 
not upon some to the exclusion of the rest.' 

If a conclusive negative could be proved from style, the question whether 
Francis was Junius would have been settled by Englishmen dealing with 
their own language in their own time. 



i 7 6 



THE ARGUMENT REVERSED. 



evidence:'* but Isaiah's historical reality is not lost like 
Homer's, in the mist of ages ; he stands as completely 
within the historical period as Demosthenes or Cicero; his 
name is on all the old, genuine title-pages, and only 
omitted in the modern, reconstructed ones ; and criticism 
has merely to decide the negative point, whether it is 
impossible that these passages in a book thus historically 
ascribed to Isaiah, can have been written by him. On the 
other hand, let me direct the reader's attention to the 
various passages in the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah in 
which the resemblances are such as can only arise from 
one having quoted or imitated the other ; and ask him to 
consider whether the relation of original and copyist, which 
exists in the case of the prophecies in which it is admitted 
that Jeremiah holds the latter place, does appear to be 
reversed in the case of those in which, on the theory before 
us, he is assumed to be the original. For while I believe 
that no positive conclusion from such exercises of the 
'higher criticism' are to be set against the external evidence 
of existing texts, it seems to me not unfair to ask what is 
the negative result of such an inquiry : namely, whether 
Jeremiah's prophecy against Moab has the appearance of a 
mere composition of thoughts and images, without the 
complete unity of the other prophecy, which is admitted 
to be the older, even by those who deny it to be by Isaiah ; 
and whether, on the contrary, Jeremiah's denunciation of 
Babylon t indicates the unity of an original work, while 
the various prophecies attributed to Isaiah on the same 
subject show signs of being derived from that source. 
There may be some weight too, in an argument from style 
in favour of unity of authorship — as when Vitringa, with- 
out suspecting that a doubt would ever be raised on the 
subject, says that he can recognize the style of Isaiah in 

* Mr. G-rote, on the Unity of the Iliad and Odyssey — History of Greece, 
ii. p. 171. And farther on (p. 217), he says, 'The point' [Homeric unity] 
' is thus still under controversy among able scholars, and is probably destined 
to remain so : for, in truth, our means of knowledge are so limited, that no 
man can produce arguments sufficientlj 7, cogent to contend against opposing 
preconceptions ; and it creates a painful sentiment of diffidence, when we 
read the expressions of equal and absolute persuasion with which the two 
opposite conclusions have both been advanced.' 

f Chapters 1. li. Ewald's hypothetical date and authorship of these chap- 
ters is, of course, a reply to my argument so far. 



PREMATURE CONCLUSIONS. 177 



every line of his writings — because this neither assumes 
anything, nor excludes anything except it be the possibili- 
ties of accidental resemblance or actual imitation. And 
while I repeat that the genuineness of the prophecy before 
us is to be maintained on the external and matter-of-fact 
ground that it is historically asserted and not critically 
disproved, it is impossible not to notice the many striking 
resemblances as to thought and imagery between this pro- 
phecy and those which no one now doubts to be by Isaiah. 
I shall refer to some of these parallels in my analysis of these 
chapters. 

But while I ask the reader to weigh these arguments 
against the conclusion that Isaiah could not have written 
these chapters, I would advise him not to be too impatient 
to have the question settled in the present stage of our know- 
ledge and critical skill : nor, when he has once acquainted 
himself with the doubts raised on the subject, to hope 
forthwith for £ the sweet sleep that he had yesterday.' He 
may, indeed, hope one day to find that true wisdom and 
understanding, in this as in all things, will keep their 
promise, and be ' life to his soul,' so that his ' foot shall 
not stumble,' and his 'sleep shall be sweet:' but the 
passage from child-like credence to manly insight is ever 
hard, and requires patience. He who, in his natural desire 
for certainty, hastily persuades himself that the arguments 
on this question are conclusive, will presently find a re- 
action in his mind which will make him more at a loss 
than before. He only who, after he has heard the debate 
on both sides retires to quiet and long meditation on it 
can hope to get any permanent result ; and he may be 
content meanwhile, if he can honestly believe that the 
genuineness of the prophecy has not been disproved, 
though brought into doubt. Let him take Chaucer's 
advice : — 

'Fly from the press, and dwell with sothfastness [truth] : — 
The wrestling of the world asketh a fall : — 
But truth thee shall deliver, 'tis no drede.' 

Some new facts may be found when the Assyrian 
Inscriptions take their settled place among historical docu- 
ments : if not, we are making daily progress in the scientific 

N 



178 ISAIAH XIII. i — 22. THE NORTHERN NATIONS. 



investigation of what Hebrew prophecy actually was, by 
the repeated examination of the subject in all directions, 
and by many workmen : and the answer to this question 
will finally be settled by a general agreement. 

Let us now return to the text of this first of the 
series of ' Burdens,' — weighty and sustained denunciations 
against the various nations. I see no sufficient reason 
for departing from this the older interpretation of NtpO, 
though modern translators seem to prefer that of ' oracle.' 
The root means ' to lift up,' whether the voice or a burden. 
If a reason be sought for the position of these prophecies 
in the general arrangement of the Book, it may be observed 
that they carry into greater detail the principles and general 
views of those which precede ; so that with one or two 
exceptions of form, rather than of essence, all the nations 
summarily named in verses 10 — 15 of chapter xi. are now 
addressed in distinct prophecies. 

A standard is set up on a bare mountain-top where it 
can be seen from far, and Jehovah is calling his armies to 
it (comp. v. 26 ; vii. 18 ; xi. 10).* In the mountains to the 
north of Babylon is heard the hum of a great multitude, 
which proves to be the northern nations gathering to 
battle, mustered by the Lord of hosts himself, and the 
weapons of his indignation (comp. chap. x. 5), for laying 
waste the whole earth, — the world-wide empire.! The day 
of Jehovah is come, and all men's hearts and hands faint % 
(comp. ii. 12 ; x. 18), every face is flushed or pallid with 
alarm and amazement. The day of Jehovah is come, and 
the lights of heaven are darkened (comp. v. 30), the 
haughtiness of the proud and terrible is laid low (comp. 
ii. 11 ; x. 12) ; the heavens and earth are shaken by the 
wrath of Jehovah (comp. ii. 21). In that populous and 
wealthy abode of luxurious and selfish civilization, the life 
of a man, his own, or that of the soldier whom at any 

* These, and the following parallels, are from the undisputed prophecies, 
f Cfcesias says of the king of Assyria ripx s r >K 7VS cnrdcrrjg. And the 
Roman empire was called oixov/iivr], orbis terrarum. 

X ' Cecidere iilis animique manusque.' 

Ovid. Met. 7, 347.— (Knobel.) 
' Sic mea perpetuis liquescunt pectora curis, 
Ignibus admotis ut nova cera solet.' 

Ovid, ex Ponto. i. 2, 57. — (G-esenius.) 



BABYLON DESOLATE. 



179 



price he would employ, shall become more precious than 
gold, because gold can no longer buy it. Babylon is 
defenceless, all her foreign auxiliaries are fled, or if any- 
where they have made a stand against the enemy, they 
have been put to the sword. The Medes care not for 
gold,* but for blood, though it be the blood of boys and 
infants : and if they want gold, they need not take it as 
ransom, for it is already theirs as plunder : they shall kill 
and spoil to the uttermost. Babylon shall be as Sodom and 
Gomorrah (comp. i. 9 ; iii. 9) : it shall be wasted and with- 
out inhabitant. The desolation shall be complete. Jehovah 
had once declared of his own vineyard that he would break 
down its wall, and lay it waste, and that strange sheep 
should feed there ; but Babylon shall not be even a pas- 
ture-ground ; the Arab wandering through Mesopotamia 
and seeking pasture for his flocks and plunder for himself, 
shall not stay nor let them stay here, but shall leave the 
palaces and the pavilions to the dances of the satyrs, and 
the cries of the owls and the hyenas. t It is said that at 
this very day the Bedouin or wandering Arab, has a super- 
stitious fear of passing a single night on the site of Babylon, 
and that the natives of the country believe it to be inha- 
bited by demons in the form of goats. There seems, 
indeed, to have been an ancient belief among the Jews 
themselves that demons took the form of goats — appeared 
as satyrs in fact. 

The word which most versions and commentators agree 
with the LXX. in rendering ' demons ' or ' satyrs ' is used 
in Leviticus xvii. 7, and 2 Chronicles xi. 15, for demons 
which the Jews worshipped. It is the ordinary name 
for the domestic goat, the wild goat being b^, but the 
former cannot be intended here, as it is said that no 
shepherds shall make their folds there. Some commen- 
tators suppose it to mean some kind of monkey in this 
place. The Egyptians worshipped both goats and mon- 

* ' Ye Medes and others who now hear me, I well know that you have not 
accompanied me in this expedition with a view of acquiring wealth.' — Speech 
of Cyrus to his Army, Xenoph. Cyrop. v. 

f ' And in their palaces 
Where luxury late reign'd, sea-monsters whelp'd, 
And stabled.' Paradise Lost, ix. 750. 

N 2 



i8o ISAIAH XIV. 1 — 23. THE SONG OF TRIUMPH. 



keys, and both would have been naturally supposed to be 
dancing satyrs. 'Constellations,' D^Vp?, in verse 10, is the 
plural of the word by which the Hebrews are believed to 
have meant the group of stars called 'Orion' by the Greeks, 
and ' the Giant ' by the Arabs. Vp3 is so used in Job 
ix. 9 ; xxxviii. 31 ; Amos v. 8. Elsewhere it means ' a 
fool,' often involving the notion of impiety ; and the con- 
stellation so named is supposed to have been conceived 
under the figure of an impious giant, probably Nimrod, 
bound upon the sky (comp. Job xxxviii. 31). The use of 
the plural — ' the Orions ' — in the passage before us to 
express ■ the greater constellations like Orion,' corresponds 
with the like idiom in English in such cases. 

Out of the destruction of Babylon shall come the de- 
liverance of Israel : the whole captive people shall be 
called, as by a new election and choice of Jehovah, and 
restored to their own land, from their hard bondage ; and 
they shall bring their former masters back with them, to 
be in turn their servants (comp. x. 20 ; xi. 10 — 16). The 
prophet then puts into the mouth of the restored nation a 
song (comp. xii. 1) of which Lowth is generally thought 
not to speak with exaggeration when he calls it the finest 
of its kind extant in any language ; and as to which, those 
who distinguish the styles of different ages of Hebrew 
literature should explain, upon what known principles the 
strongly marked and gradual decline of literary power and 
taste between the times of Isaiah and Ezra could have 
exhibited such a revival as this ode shows. It is a song 
of triumph in the form of a dirge, and therefore involves 
an under-current of sarcasm or irony. The oppressor 
and his proud rage have ceased, Jehovah has broken the 
staff of the tyrant (comp. x. 24 — 27 ; xiv. 25), and the 
whole earth, even to the very fir-trees, is at rest, and 
breaks into singing.* Hell — the unseen world of gloom 

* ' All the earth is gay : 
Land and sea 

Give themselves up to jollity.' 

Wordsworth, Ode. 

' Ipsi lastitia voces ad sidera jactant 
Intonsi montes ; ipsas jam carmina rapes, 
Ipsa sonant arhusta.' Virg. Eel. v. 62. 



THE MOUNT OF ASSEMBLY. 



181 



to which the grave is the gate — is stirred to receive the 
new-comer with his pomp and the noise of his viols 
(comp. v. 12, 14), and the shadowy and giant forms of 
once famous kings rise from their thrones below to meet 
their brother, now become weak as they. Israel then 
seems to resume the speech, though the transition is 
indistinctly marked, and contrasts the ambition of him 
who would have ascended into heaven and to the heights 
of the heavenly hill, with his actual fate, brought down 
to hell and to the depths of its pit. The old expla- 
nation of ' the mount of the congregation, in the sides of 
the north,' was, that it referred to Mount Sion and the 
Temple, and that the cloud (the original is in the singu- 
lar) was the white cloud of God's presence ; the impious 
boast thus corresponding to that in chapter x. 1 1 , ' Shall 
I not, as I have done to Samaria and her idols, so do 
to Jerusalem and her images ? ' The Hebrew word is 
that used habitually for the ' assembly ' or ' congregation ' 
of Israel, while the phrase 1 sides of the north ' is that 
which is employed in reference to Mount Sion in Psalm 
xlviii. 2 ; and though I am aware of another explanation of 
the latter passage, I cannot but think it more probably a 
known expression descriptive of Sion, and so used, both 
there and here. I see no anti-climax in such a reading ; 
nor that there is any impropriety in the blending of the 
heathenish and the Jewish belief on the subject into one 
image. The modern interpretation, that the reference is 
to the assembly of the gods in some Meru-mountain in 
the northern, and therefore highest, realms of an eastern 
mythology, seems to me far-fetched and foreign to the 
Hebrew habits of thought : and I conclude that it must 
have been adopted by great authorities on the supposition 
that the local traditions which place Sion on the south of 
J erusalem, must be preferred to those of the Talmud, which 
declare it to have been on the north :* — as to which ques- 
tion, see below, on Isaiah xxii. One poetical image sug- 
gests or thrusts out another in rapid succession. The 
king of Babylon — who made the earth to tremble (comp. 

* £ Upon Mount Zion ... for Zion was in the north of Jerusalem.' — Ibn 
Ezra, Commentary on Isaiah, xiv. 13, English Translation, p. 71. 



1 82 THE DESTROYER DESTROYED. 

ii. 21) who destroyed kingdoms and cities, and carried the 
inhabitants away (compare the description of the king of 
Assyria and his fall in chapter v. 5 — 27) — shall not share 
what just now seemed the low condition of the other 
monarchs but now presents itself as a glorious repose, 
when contrasted with his lot — falling by the sword, his 
body not embalmed but the food of worms, refused a 
royal sepulchre, and fortunate if he can get so much 
burial as to be thrown into a pit with the common slain, 
(comp. x. 4), which shall cover his carcase trodden under 
foot (comp. v. 25), and be his only grave-clothes. He 
shall be cut off from the main stem of his family and 
race like a worthless, nay, abominable branch (comp. 
x. 33). The word 'branch' is used here as elsewhere 
in a genealogical sense, and the words are a vehement 
anticipation of the thought below, ' the seed of evildoers 
(comp. i. 4) shall not be named for ever ;' where the word 
' named ' or ' renowned ' is the same as in the passage, ' in 
Isaac shall thy name be called,' and as in Ruth iv. 14, 
which latter compare with its context. Jehovah himself 
will take care to cut off the ' name and the remnant,' the 
direct heir and the collateral remainder-man, and the city, 
like its royal family, shall be exterminated. The thought 
is the converse of that in chapter iv. 2 — 6, and the cor- 
respondence may be noticed in the argument for authorship 
from style. The appropriateness of the image of pools of 
water is evident when we remember that Babylon lay in a 
low situation, where the land was only kept from the 
periodical inundations of the Euphrates by constant atten- 
tion to the canals and ditches. If it were deserted by its 
inhabitants, it would inevitably become ' pools of water ' 
in a short time : — as is now the case. The expression, 
£ besom of destruction,' finds a counterpart in the annals 
of Sargon, where he calls himself ' the sweeper away of 
Samaria and of the whole of Beth-Omri.' 

But the invasion of Judaea, not the subsequent deporta- 
tion of its inhabitants (like that which had already begun 
in the northern tribes of the kingdom of Samaria), might 
seem the more pressing danger to Isaiah's own country- 
men at the time he wrote ; therefore he winds up this far- 



THE PURPOSE OF JEHOVAH. 183 

seeing denunciation of the ultimate fates of Babylon and 
Israel, with a declaration of Jehovah's purpose, — confirmed 
with an oath, and not to be disannulled, — to break the 
power of the Assyrians while they were still in his land, on 
the confines of which they were now hovering, if they had 
not already entered it ; and to free his people from the yoke 
of tribute and oppression, which they were already feeling 
the weight of. This is the purpose which Jehovah has 
purposed upon the whole earth, and which he will execute 
with a hand that none shall turn back. As these last four 
verses are held to be from the hand of Isaiah by those who 
deny to him the authorship of the previous part of the 
prophecy, it is worth while to notice their connection both 
with those passages (xiii. 1 — 13) which describe the 
destruction of the whole earth in this day of Jehovah, and 
with those (xiv. 3 — 6) which predict the deliverance of 
Israel from their hard bondage in which they work under 
the continual stroke of the oppressor. 



CHAPTER X. 



ISAIAH XIV. 28 — 32. — PHILISTIA. — ORIGIN OP THE PHILISTINES THEIR EXTERMI- 
NATION COMMANDED BY MOSES. — LAW OP CONQUESTS AND EXTERMINATIONS. 
— BRITISH CONQUEST OP INDIA. EVIL NOT ETERNAL. PHILISTIA's RELA- 
TIONS WITH JUDAH WITH ASSYRIA. SARGON AND SENNACHERIB IN 

PHILISTIA. 

' TN the year that king Ahaz died was this burden :' — 
namely, on Philistia. There is a turn of expression 
in this title such as an author himself would be likely to 
give, when arranging and editing his writings in a collected 
form ; and such as a patriot might use to express his 
feeling at the thought of the relief from national shame 
and suffering which the change from an Ahaz to a Hezekiah 
had effected. Like the opening of chapter vi., it is better 
referred to the time before, than after, the king's death, as 
the context shows. 

Philistia was the south-west coast of the land of Canaan, 
to the whole of which it afterwards gave its name in the 
Greek form of Palestine, and was nominally included in 
the tribe of Judah. It was originally inhabited by the 
Avites, who were expelled by the Caphtorim, a race of 
Egyptian origin, but supposed to have come immediately 
from Crete or Cyprus, and who, under the name of 
Philistines, continued as a distinct, and for the most part 
independent, nation, in spite of the efforts of Israel to 
subdue them. These Caphtorim are also called Cherethim, 
which latter would be the Hebrew mode of writing Cretans, 
and which is twice translated Kpijres by the LXX. ; whence 
it has been inferred that there is ground for a tradition 
which says that the Cretans took possession of this coast 
under Minos, who built Gaza, and called it Minoa. We 
may infer from Amos ix. 7 and Deut. ii. 23 (in which 



ISAIAH XIV. 28 — 32. PHILISTIA. 185 



latter verse translate Hazerim ' villages,' instead of leaving 
it a proper name), that this immigration of the Caphtorim 
must have taken place within the historical memory of 
the Jews, though at such a period that Abraham found 
them already settled, as Philistines. The supposition of 
Yitringa that the 1 Cherethites and Pelethites,' were Cretan 
and Philistine bowmen, the body-guards of David, has been 
adopted by some of the most recent authorities on this 
subject : it derives probability from David's long sojourn 
in Philistia, and the attachment which Ittai the Gittite (of 
Gath) showed to his fortunes ; and from the discovery from 
the Egyptian monuments that the kings of the xixth and 
xxth dynasties had in their service mercenaries of a mari- 
time nation cognate with the Philistines, and of which the 
name — Shayretana — is said to be almost identical with 
the Hebrew Cherethim.'" 

The Philistines were among the nations whom Moses 
commanded the children of Israel to exterminate. We 
shall judge of this command according to our belief or 
disbelief that there is a morality and a criminal justice for 
nations as well as for individuals ; but it would perhaps 
never have been so commonly impugned as it has been 
but for the no less common and far less moral defence, 
that the act commanded would have been mere wickedness 
in any other people, but that being commanded by God it 
was thus made lawful for the Jews. But as to the com- 
mand itself, considered in relation to the historical time 
/ind circumstances in which it was given, and apart from 
such defences of it, I say that it was neither unrighteous 
nor unmerciful, and that it is not an exception to the 
universal law by which men are to govern themselves, but 
the announcement of the law which always has been and 
always will be applicable to all like cases, — whether a 
return of the Heracleids, a Spanish conquest of Mexico, a 
Saxon or a Norman invasion of England, or a Sir James 
Brooke's destruction of Borneo pirates. If the spread of 
civilization, knowledge, justice, virtue, religion, and what- 

* 2 Sam. viii. 18; xv. 18—22 ; xx. 7; 1 Kings i. 38—44. And Winer's 
Reahvcerterbuch, and Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, under the several names 
above. 



i86 



LAW OF CONQUESTS 



ever else distinguishes men from beasts, is a good and not 
an evil, then it is good for men to use all the means which 
are really necessary to effect that end, even though some 
of them be never so rough and unpleasing ; and it is not 
less base in public than in private morals to shrink from 
the responsibility of ourselves doing that which we know 
it is good to have done. If a weak, effeminate, degenerate 
nation can be improved by subjection to a stronger, man- 
lier, more virtuous nation, then it is not only the right 
but the duty of the latter to bring it into subjection, 
whenever the indications of God's providence, be they of 
peace or war, show that the time has come. And if the 
nation is not merely degenerate but hopelessly corrupt, 
then it is not only the right, but the duty of some worthier 
nation to destroy it, and rid the world of its abominations. 
The Gospel has given to us, in modern Christendom, means 
of reclaiming nations who would have been irreclaimable 
by any measures which Greeks or Komans, or even Jews 
could apply ; and we are bound to act with corresponding 
gentleness and forbearance. But if we look at the actual 
condition and relations of the Israelites and the nations of 
Canaan in the time of Moses, we see that the Canaanites 
had reached the last stage of degeneracy when they made 
their very religion to consist in the practice of their 
characteristic crimes of unnatural cruelty or lust, and that 
wherever they were tolerated instead of exterminated by 
the Israelites the purer morals as well as faith of the 
Israelites soon fell under the pestilent contagion, and they 
not only followed their gods, but ' did after their abomina- 
tions :' so that the event proved what Moses foresaw, that 
if the future nation of Israel was to fill that place in the 
Avorld and the world's history which its ' right noble stock,' 
its stirps generosa et historica, already indicated it to be 
intended to fill, room must be made for it not merely in 
territory but in moral atmosphere, by a national execution 
such as we Christians still inflict on individual criminals 
of like magnitude. If Moses had counted the slow moral 
death of Israel a less evil than the physical extinction of 
races who had already destroyed their own human being, 
what would have been the condition of the world now, and 



AND EXTERMINATIONS. 



187 



what the state of the world-wide contest between good and 
evil ? If we examine the whole case in that impartial and 
thoughtful temper which alone becomes the student of 
history, we must, I think, come to the conclusion that 
these injunctions of Moses are really righteous ; and 
worthy — if the creation of man at all was worthy — of the 
God of righteousness : and that their provisions for con- 
fining the destruction of life within the narrowest limits 
possible,"* are in accordance with the recognized rules of 
warfare in the humanest ancient nations, and with much 
of the practice of even those of Christian Europe. In a 
word, I believe that if we can read them in the light of 
universal history, and history in their light, we shall see 
them to be what they claim to be, — a part of the revelation 
of God. 

Here, as always, the Bible reveals to us the universal 
law of political society, in the special instance of the 
Hebrew nation. The claim of Abraham's descendants to 
the land of Canaan, because God had given it to him, is a 
claim essentially of the same kind as that of the Dorians 
to Sparta, or of the Normans to England. There was no 
more technical force in the first than in the others : they 
no less than it were divinely inspired and sanctioned : but 
the Hebrew grant and conquest, taken in connection with 
the whole previous and subsequent history of which they 
are a part, reveal God as the righteous Author and 
Upholder of political society, anticipating, preparing, and 
directing all the successive arrangements by which the end 
is to be effected ; and thus they throw a direct light (for 
him who cares to have it) on all other national conquests 
and settlements, Avhich these reflect back on it. The Jews 
were no doubt as bloody and rapacious in their manner of 
effecting their settlement in Palestine, as many other 
nations in like circumstances ; but this does but make it 
clearer that we have to distinguish between the thing 
that had to be done because it was right and good to do 
it, and the imperfect human instruments who did it in a 
very imperfect manner. As soon as we once get this 
distinction between the eternal, wise, and good law of 

* Deut. xx. 10—18. 



i88 



CONQUEST OF INDIA. 



national settlements, and the partial and defective realiza- 
tions of it in time by men, we recover trie old faith in the 
Bible as the revelation of God's mind ; and yet are freer 
than the freest sceptic from the strange, yet common, per- 
version of reverence into superstition which has made 
men so continually fall back on that (in truth, though not 
in intention) immoral and blasphemous defence of the 
Hebrew conquest, which pleads that it 1 is but a wrong 
in God's own world, and he may quickly make it right. ' # 
This doctrine has made many a man reject the Bible, 
when he has too hastily supposed that it did contain 
what he had been taught from childhood to be there, 
but what his own conscience told him was contrary to the 
immutable distinction of right and wrong. And it has 
developed that unhealthy and dishonest way of looking at 
history and politics by religious men, that atheistic separa- 
tion between worldly and religious grounds of political 
action (as though the former, no less than the latter, were 
not good in its place) which we are all familiar with. Thus, 
every student of the history of the establishment of the 
British power in India knows that our merchants there 
were originally actuated by no ambitious designs, but by 
singularly limited desires for mere peaceful traffic ; and 
that they allowed the conquests of Clive in Bengal, as well 
as the earlier wars at Madras, with the greatest reluctance, 
and merely in order to defend themselves in the midst of 
the general anarchy into which the Mogul empire was 
dissolved : and yet religious writers really well acquainted 
with history have preferred to ignore the real current of 
events, and to assert that our possession of India cannot 
be justified on Christian grounds, and is no place for a 
Christian governor like Sir John Shore ; but that we have 
of course a right, on worldly grounds, to hold and govern 
what a worldly disregard of the principles of the Bible 
alone enabled us to get. Let us take the facts of the con- 
quest as they really occurred ; and let us say that though 
the English traders had as little belief that God was 

* ' Why the wrong is hut a wrong i' the world ; and having the world for 
your lahour, 'tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it 
right.' — Othello, iv. 3. 



EVIL NOT ETERNAL. 



,89 



calling on them ' to go up and possess the land/ as they 
had ambitious inclination to do so ; yet that because it 
was God's will to re-organize India under Christian laws 
and institutions, after those of Menu and of the Koran 
had done their work, he by his providence made the first 
steps of the conquest unavoidable, and so led us on to the 
subsequent position, in which an ambitious Hastings or 
Wellesley, no less than a justice-loving Cornwallis or a 
pious and philanthropic Shore were made to do their suc- 
cessive tasks : — and then we shall falsify neither the Bible 
nor history. 

I leave the question of the origin of evil as insoluble 
as ever. I only assert that the harsh subjugation or 
extinction of degenerate and corrupt races has often been 
the only practical remedy known to men for the still 
greater evil of their continued existence, and may there- 
fore be rightly accepted as God's command in the matter : 
yet that God would not have commanded it unless it had 
been essentially righteous, and that the explanation that 
God has a right to do wrong, though reproduced with all 
the pomp of the newest phrases of philosophy, is alike 
immoral and irrational. If the infliction of suffering is 
often an end — a hopeless end — where even the best men 
are the agents, it cannot be so with God. The doctrine 
that God's punishments are eternal, that is, ends and not 
means ; and which can believe, with complacency, that 
God has made hell a permanent and important part of 
heaven, and consigned a large portion of the human race 
to it, with no higher kind of justice than imperfect men 
can devise, is an assertion that God is made in our image, 
is to ' change the glory of the incorruptible God into an 
image made like corruptible man.' Such notions — very 
different when deliberately systematized, to what they are 
as held by a Luther who exclaims - Nature says it is un- 
just, Grace says it is unjust, but Glory will prove it just,' 
and there leaves it in reverent humility — still hang about 
us, and we are afraid of rooting them up, lest we root 
up wheat with the tares. But they are ready to vanish. 
The growing faith that reformation, not destruction, is the 
end in man's dealings with the rebel against human law, 



190 



THE PHILISTINES : 



is but the refracted light which tells that a clearer, 
brighter, more Christian apprehension of God's character 
is dawning upon us. And instead of our continuing to 
fancy that we are bound to read the New Testament, by 
the dimmer light of the Old, and to limit the inspiration of 
the Apostle of the Gentiles in his amplest utterances, by 
the letter of a few of his sentences, interpreted (or rather 
misinterpreted) so literally as to be no more logical than 
moral, we shall find ourselves made free by the truth as 
it is in Christ ; and then we shall no longer pass by, but 
shall give the importance and the meaning which St. Paul 
himself gives to, that ' revelation of the mystery of the 
grace of God in Christ, which in other ages was not made 
known unto the sons of men,' and which Christians have 
so strangely refused for the most part to receive since it 
has been revealed to them. Then we shall understand 
that ' the whole family in heaven and earth' is named of 
God and of Christ ; that the very meaning of the Gospel, 
the good news itself, is that, where sin has abounded grace 
shall m%ich more abound, and reign (not unto death, but) 
unto eternal life. ' As in Adam all die, even so in 
Christ shall all be made alive ; but every man in his own 
order. . . . And when all things shall be subdued unto 
him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him 
that put all things under him, that God may be all 
in all.' 

The author of the Book of Judges, with the political 
insight of this nation of prophets, points out how the 
inability of the Israelites to drive out the Philistines 
(among other nations) was the consequence of their losing 
their faith in Jehovah their King, and with it their mili- 
tary as well as moral superiority ; and how this evil was 
yet, by God's providence, made to promote its own cure, 
the oppresions of the heathens stimulating them both ' to 
learn war,' and to return from their idolatrous associations 
to the true faith. * The Philistines were very formidable 
enemies to Israel in the days of Samuel and of Saul. The 
strong kings, David, Solomon, and Jehoshaphat, kept them 
in subjection, but in the days of Jehoram they invaded 

* Judges ii. 20, to iii. 4, which, may be called the text to the whole hook. 



THEIR WARS WITH ISRAEL 



191 



Jjidah.* Uzziah again repressed them, and crippled their 
power, dismantling their walled cities, and building for- 
tresses of his own to command them ; t and no doubt they 
continued tributary during the still vigorous government of 
his successor J otham. But during the weak reign of Ahaz, 
they ' invaded the cities of the low country, and of the 
south of Judah ;' and not only invaded, but settled them- 
selves in them, and their neighbouring villages :+ and to 
this state of things Isaiah addresses himself in this pro- 
phecy. And here as elsewhere we may notice the appro- 
priateness of his language, indicating accurate knowledge 
and lively imagination: the words 'gate' and 'city,' and the 
threat that ' famine ' shall be the chief, and the sword only 
the subordinate, instrument of their destruction, point to 
the strongholds which characterized the Philistian power ; 
and the 'feeding' and 'lying down' of the defenceless 
Israelite alludes to the ' low country ' which lay so open to 
its inroads. The rod of the taskmaster is Isaiah's frequent 
image for the control of a dependent and tributary nation: 
all Philistia had rejoiced when the rod of David and of 
Uzziah fell broken from the hands of Ahaz, and expressed 
their joy by wasting or taking possession of their former 
master's lands ; but Isaiah warns them that the old root of 
Israel, which from the days of Samson§ had sent forth 
many a rod with a serpent's life like the rod of Moses, 
w r ould soon again produce a basilisk with its royal crest, 
its inevitable spring, and its mortal bite, to take vengeance 
on his enemies. The ' first-born of the poor ' seems to be 
a Hebrew idiom for the ' really, eminently, poor,' like that 
of ' Son of Man ' to express the man : so Job uses the 
' first-born of death ' for death itself, or a violent death ; 
and the ' sons of thunder ' are persons of a thundering 
disposition : — a phraseology apparently springing from the 
strong family feeling of the Hebrew. Or the prophet may 
mean that the first of the next generation, the children of 
the present depressed Israelites, shall be delivered from the 

* 2 Sam. v. 17—25, xxi. 15; 2 Chron. xvii. 11, xxi. 16, 17. 

f 2 Chron. xxvi. 6, 7. % 2 Chron. xxviii. 18. 

§ Samson was of the tribe of Dan : and this image of a serpent may have 
been suggested by the saying of Jacob — ' Dan shall be a serpent by the 
way.' Genesis xlix. 17. 



I 9 2 



THE SMOKE FROM THE NORTH. 



miseries which the Philistines are now inflicting on their 
fathers. The Philistines had latterly so overrun and 
plundered the country that there was neither food for 
the poor peasant and his family, nor safety for any who 
were too weak to protect themselves : but things shall 
soon be reversed ; those roots of Philistia, the five cities 
with their five lords, shall be reduced by famine though 
their walls hold out, and then the sword shall smite those 
who would escape. 

Thus far the prophet would seem to be predicting the 
recovery by Judah of its supremacy, in the expected event 
of the death of Ahaz, pointed to by the title : but then, 
either as though he doubted whether Judah itself would 
effect the conquest, or more probably with an abrupt turn 
to the thought of the Assyrian power which he could see 
was preparing to sweep over all the southern nations, and 
Philistia among them, with a violence far greater than any 
Judsean army could exert, he proceeds to say that they 
shall not only return to that subordination which Judah en- 
forced when it could ; but that their whole polity should be 
dissolved : — for why ? ' For there cometh from the north 
a smoke ;' and when that smoke, * that too intelligible 
cloud of dust, draws nearer, it will reveal that army of 
which the fame is already striking terror into all the 
nations of the earth, the army which ' has no straggler in 
its ranks,'! and at the approach of which the strongest city 
may despair, and the councillors who sit in its gate change 
their wisest plans into lamentations. Then the Philistines 

* ' Ac simul iEneas fumantes pulvere campos 
Prospexit longe, Laurentiaque agmina vidit.' 

Virg. JEn. xi. 908. 

'First was seen dust, like a white cloud,' as the army of the Great King 
came on against the younger Cyrus. — Grote's Greece, ix. 58. 

When the pei.il from Attila and his Huns was imminent, Amianus hishop 
of Orleans sent ' a messenger to ohserve from the' ramparts the face of the 
distant country ... In his third report he mentioned a small cloud ... at the 

extremity of the horizon It is the aid of God, exclaimed the hishop, 

. . . and the whole multitude repeated after him, It is the aid of God. The 
remote object became each moment larger . . . the Roman and Gothic ban- 
ners were gradually perceived ; and a favourable wind, blowing aside the 
dust, discovered in deep array the impatient squadrons of iEtius and Theo- 
doric, who pressed forward to the relief of Orleans.' — Gibbon, Decline and 
Fall, ch. xxxv. 

f Compare the description in chapter v. ver. 26 — 30. 



S ARGON'S INVASION OF PHILISTIA. 193 



will send ambassadors to propose to Judah some scheme of 
alliance and combined defence against the common foe ; 
but Jehovah's chosen people will reply — as it was the one 
unvarying principle of Isaiah's policy that they ought to 
reply to all such propositions — that they will make no 
such alliance with heathens, but will put their trust in 
Jehovah ; and when the flood of invasion spreads over the 
land the defenceless inhabitants of the open country will 
take refuge in Zion, and there look to Jehovah to keep his 
own city. ' We tell our Lord God,' said Luther, ' that if 
he will have his Church, he must keep it himself, for we 
cannot do it ; and it is well for us that we cannot, else we 
should be the proudest asses under heaven.' 

Putting the few facts in the Hebrew records with the 
ampler statements in the Assyrian annals, the subsequent 
history of Philistia, and in which this prophecy of Isaiah 
was fulfilled, stands thus : — Hezekiah made the Philistines 
once more tributary to Judah,* and not improbably 
entered into some arrangements with the Egyptians for 
opposing the southward progress of the Assyrians, by 
means of garrisons in the strong fortresses of Philistia. 
Sargon on the other hand, after the conquest of Damascus 
and Samaria, advanced to the west and south, and he 
thus narrates this campaign — ' I besieged, I took, the 
city of Samaria; I made captive 27,280 men its in- 
habitants ; I seized fifty of their chariots, and ordered the 
rest to be taken; I set my judges over them, and imposed 
on them the tribute of the previous king. Hanon, king of 
the city of Gaza, with Sebechus (Sab-i), sultan of Egypt, 
came to battle and combat against me at the city of 
Raphia (Pa-pi-hi) ; I put them to flight : Sebechus could 
not resist the attack of my servants ; he fled, and his foot- 
steps were not seen. I took Hanon, king of the city of 
Gaza, by my hand. I fixed the tribute of Pharaoh, king 
of Egypt, of Samsia, queen of Arabia, of It Himar the 
Sabsean, — gold, frankincense, horses, camels.' Then, after 
an account of a campaign or campaigns in Syria and 
Armenia, the inscription goes on : — ' Azuris, king of the 
city of Ashdod, hardened his heart against payment of 

* 2 Kings xviii. 8. 
O 



194 SENNACHERIB'S INVASION 



tribute ; he sent to the kings his neighbours messages 
hostile to Assyria. Therefore I prepared vengeance ; I 
changed the government over the people of his district, 
I raised his brother Ahimiti in his place to the throne 
over them. The people of Syria revolted and refused his 
rule ; they put over themselves Yamani, who was not the 
rightful possessor of the throne, and who knew not the 
manner of governing. In the wrath of my heart I 
divided not the force of my army, I reduced not my 
baggage, I went against the city of Ashdod with my 
warriors who separated themselves not from the tracks 
of the sandals of my feet. But Yamani heard from afar 
of the coming of my expedition, he fled beyond Egypt to 
the confines of Meroe : his footsteps were not seen. Ash- 
dod, Gimtu-Ashdodin, I besieged. I took his gods, his 
wife, his sons, his daughters, his wealth, his family, his 
house, and the people of his land I treated as spoil. I 
again repaired those cities, and put in them the people of 
the lands which I had taken with 'my hand towards the 
rising sun : I governed them with men of Assyria, and they 
continued faithful. The king of Meroe, who, in * * * a 
desert place * * "* Since ancient time, his fathers had 
not sent their ambassador to the kings my fathers to seek 
peace, and to acknowledge the might of Merodach. * * * 
But the terrors of the greatness of my majesty moved him, 
and fear turned him. He cast him (Yamani) into iron 
bonds, and chains of iron, and directed his steps towards 
Assyria, and came before me.' * Sennacherib, on coming 
to the throne, found that the Philistian lords, like Hezekiah, 
were reiusing to pay the tribute imposed on them by his 
predecessors : so, after visiting Tyre and Sidon for the 
like reason, he proceeded to Philistia, and of what he did 
there he gives the following account : — ' Sitka of Ascalon, 
who did not come to pay me homage, the gods of his 

* Grande Insertion du Palais de Khorsabad. publiee et commentee par 
MM J. Oppert et J. Menant, Paris, lh63. I have translated the Latin 
version given with the cuneiform text. The asterisks mark mutilated and 
illegible parts of the Inscription. Sir Henry KawJinson had given an 
account, with a partial version, of this Inscription, in his Commentary on the 
Cuneiform Inscriptions, 1850. The two versions of Dr. Schrader {Die Keilin- 
schriften, pp. 25X — 261), and Prof. Finzi (Ricerche, p. 45), substantially agree 
with that which I have giv.n. 



EGYPTIAN ALLIANCES. 



195 



house, and his treasures, his sons and his daughters, and 
his brothers of the house of his father, I seized and sent 
off to Assyria. I placed Sarluki, the son of Eukibti, over 
the people of Ascalon, and I imposed on him the regulated 
amount of tribute. In the course of my campaign, Beth- 
Dagon, Joppa, Benebarak, Azur, cities of Sitka which had 
refused to submit to my authority, I took and plundered. 
The nobles and the people of Ekron, who had put Padi, 
their king, and my Assyrian vassal, in irons, and delivered 
him to Hezekiah of Judaea with hostile intentions, under 
cover of night, their hearts feared. The kings of Egypt 
had called in the archers, chariots, and horses of the king 
of Miruhka [Meroe, or ^Ethiopia], of which the numbers 
could not be counted. In the neighbourhood of the city 
of Altaku I joined battle with them. Trusting in Asur, 
my lord, I fought with them, I overcame them. The 
charioteers and sons of the king of Egypt, with the 
charioteers of the king of " Meroe," I took alive in the 
fight with my hand. I took the cities of Altaku and 
Timnath, and carried away the captives. I went against 
the city of Ekron, I slew the chiefs of the people who had 
rebelled : I impaled their bodies on stakes round the 
walls of the city. I carried into captivity the people of 
the city who had committed wrong or violence. I granted 
pardon to the rest of the inhabitants who had taken no 
part in the insurrection, nor done anything worthy of 
condemnation. Their king, Padi, I then brought back 
from the city of Jerusalem, and again placed him in 
authority over them, imposing on him the regulated 
tribute of the empire.' * 

The learned translators of these annals differ chiefly as 

* Rawlinson, Outline, p. 23 ; Hincks, in Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, 
p. 143 ; Oppert, Les Inscriptions des Sargonides, pp. 44, 45 ; Schrader, Die Keilin- 
schrtften, pp. 186, 187. I have retained the earlier version of Sir H. Rawlin- 
son, where it has not heen materially changed hy the later translators. The 
names Altaku and Timnath (Taam-na) are identified by Dr. Schrader {Keilin- 
schriften, p. 77) with the Eltakeh and Thimnathoth of Joshua xix. 43, 44 
(comp. Judges xiv. 1), which were among the Philistian cities allotted to the 
tribe of Dan, and which were therefore in the country which was the seat of 
war in this campaign of Sennacherib. Prof. Finzi (Ricerche, p. 386) gives the 
same identification of ' Tamna,' but supposes 'Altaqu' to represent the 
Eltekon of Joshua xv. 59 ; but Dr. Schrader gives strong reasons for preferring 
his own conclusion. 

0 2 



1 96 OTHER ALLIANCES AGAINST ASSYRIA. 



to details of no great importance : the general purport 
of their versions is the same ; and if it be in the main 
correct, we may infer that the Egyptian alliance which 
Isaiah more specifically denounces hereafter was a part 
of a great political system of combined defence against 
Assyria; and then the similarity of the prophet's 'burdens' 
of Tyre and Moab to this of Philistia, confirms the proba- 
bility that they too were members of the system, and 
throws a new light on Isaiah's purpose in making them 
the subjects of his discourse. We shall have to return to 
this alliance : here we may observe, that on this, as on so 
many other occasions, Isaiah foretells what ought to have 
been, and would have been, if it had not been prevented 
by want of faith in the Jewish government and people : 
he gives the answer which Hezekiah ought to have returned 
to the proposals of the Philistines : Sennacherib's annals 
tell us what answer the Jewish king did return, and how 
he was punished for it. Yet in the end God's plan and 
purpose, and his prophet's declaration of it were fulfilled : 
after they had tried to save themselves by their own 
policy, they did in the end, and in their extremity, turn 
to Jehovah to save them. 



CHAPTER XL 



ISAIAH XV., XVI. — MOAB. — PROBABLY REDUCED BY SHALMANESER. — HISTORY 
OF MOAB — PICTURE OF ITS OVERTHROW. — TRIBUTE OF LAMBS DUE TO 

JUDAH. FRIENDSHIP "WITH JUDAH ADVISED. MODERN DISTINCTION 

BETWEEN THE ANIMAL AND SPIRITUAL LIFE. — CORPORATE UNITY OF A STATE. 

! fpHE Burden of Moab.' — The place and the contents of 
J- this prophecy agree to indicate that it was delivered 
about the same time with the preceding ; that is, in the 
last year of Ahaz, or the first of Hezekiah. The only 
historical reference to its fulfilment, which it threatens 
shall certainly be within three years from its delivery, is 
what we may consider to lie in Sennacherib's mention of 
Kemosh-natbi of Moab, as one of the kings who repaired 
to his presence in the neighbourhood of the city of Tyre, 
with their accustomed tribute, in his third campaign.* 
But Moab can hardly have escaped the lot of all the neigh- 
bouring nations at this period of Assyrian conquest : and 
at no time was it more likely to be invaded than when 
Shalmaneser came up to besiege Samaria, in the third year 
of Hezekiah. The adoption of this prophecy by Jeremiah, 
shows that Moab, like other nations threatened by Isaiah, 
was again a flourishing people, and destined to suffer a 
renewed and severer fulfilment of the judgment originally 
pronounced. 

The Moabites, a collateral tribe of the Hebrew race, had 
(before the departure of the latter from Egypt) established 
themselves in a territory from which they had driven out 
the Emims, and which extended from Zoar at the southern 
extremity of the Dead Sea, to the river Jabbok on the 
north, and was bounded on the west by that sea and the 

* Oppert, Inscriptions, p. 44, and Eawlinson, Outline, p. 22. Mr. George 
Smith reads the name as I have given it above. — Notices of Palestine in the 
Cuneiform Inscriptions, in Palestine Exploration Fund Statement for Oct. 1872. 



198 



HISTORY OF MOAB. 



Jordan, and on the east by the desert. But not many 
years before the children of Israel took possession of the 
land of Canaan, Sihon king of the Amorites, who then 
dwelt in Canaan, passed the Jordan, conquered all that 
part of Moab which lies between the rivers Jabbok and 
Arnon, left the Moabites only the tract south of the latter 
river, and made Heshbon his capital. 

Moses had commanded the Israelites to respect the 
territory and the rights of Moab, as he had those of Edom 
and Ammon, and he would have passed peaceably through 
the kingdom of Sihon, but the latter refused to permit 
him, and gave him battle ; and, on his defeat, Moses took 
possession of his newly acquired territory, and divided it 
between Reuben and Gad. Balak, king of Moab, took 
alarm, though unmolested ; but after an alliance with the 
Midianites, and taking the prophet Balaam to their counsels, 
they thought it more politic to conciliate than to attack the 
strangers. And from this time the relations of the two 
peoples were sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly. In 
the days of the Judges, Eglon, king of Moab, made Israel 
tributary for eighteen years, but he was killed by Ehud, 
and the yoke broken. A time of peace then appears to have 
succeeded, in which we see, from the story of Ruth, that 
not merely friendly intercourse, but even intermarriage 
took place. Saul made war on the Moabites, and David 
reduced them to be tributaries. After the separation of the 
Ten Tribes from Judah, Moab continued a province of the 
former kingdom, and the tribute paid to Ahab was ' a hun- 
dred thousand lambs, and a hundred thousand rams, with 
the wool,' for ' Mesha king of Moab was a sheep-master.' 
At the death of Ahab the Moabites rebelled* against his son 
Joram, who, with the aid of Judah and Edom, defeated the 
rebels in a great battle, and laid waste their land : but they do 
not seem to have been reduced to permanent submission, as 

* The Inscription on the lately-discovered Moabite stone appears to he a 
contemporary record of King Mesa himself, of his rebellion against Israel 
and his subsequent restoration of the fortresses of the country. It has 
been supposed that it was engraved on an altar erected to Chemosh, to whose 
anger Mesa attributes the former conquest of Moab, and the recovery of its 
independence to his favour. A full and very interesting account of its dis- 
covery, and destruction, as well as of its contents, will be found in "Wilson and 
"Warren's Recovery of Jerusalem, pp. 496, ff. 



ISAIAH XV. 1—9. THE 'BURDEN' OF MOAB. 199 



they were shortly able to make war on Jehoshaphat in revenge 
for his late alliance against them. About fifty years after, 
Ave find marauding ' bands of the Moabites ' entering the 
territory of Ephraim, as though they were either independent 
or in revolt. And after a further silence of history for 
more than a century, we here find Moab not only a flourish- 
ing and independent kingdom, but in unquestioned posses- 
sion of the ancient lands and cities of Reuben and Gad. 
Moab had, as Jeremiah complains of Ammon, become 'the 
heir of Israel,' * and the absence of even so much of pro- 
test from this prophecy of Isaiah, seems to indicate that 
the possession was, partly at least, held by old prescriptive 
right. Some of the cities, though granted by Moses to 
Reuben and Gad, may have continued in the hands of 
their former possessors, as those of Philistia did ; and the 
Moabite power and territory would probably extend itself 
as the strength and population of the kingdom of Ephraim 
decayed, till the Assyrian deportations of the latter, of 
which more than one had already occurred, ended any 
remaining disputes. 

The national worship of Moab was that of the god, or 
gods, Chemosh and Baal-Peor. Chemosh is conjectured by 
Gesenius to mean the Subduer, while Baal is Lord, or 
Master ; and Baal-Peor is explained to mean Baal of 
Mount Peor, the mount to which Balak took Balaam to 
curse Israel, and which was, perhaps, the chief place of 
their worship. The national character and national worship 
were, no doubt, as intimately related as they are found to 
be in all nations which have left sufficient means of infor- 
mation on the subject. And we see from the notices of 
Moab in the histories of Israel and the prophecies, that 
Moab was a fierce and warlike people, rich, and compara- 
tively civilized ; while there is something in the religious 
tone of king Mesa s Inscription not unlike that of the 
Hebrews themselves. t 

The vision of the overthrow of Moab rises before the 
prophet. Ar-Moab, or Rabbath-Moab — 'Moab's City,' — 
of which the ruins, under the name of Mab, or Erabba, 

* Jer. xlix. 1. 

t The article Moab in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible leaves nothing unsaid. 



INVASION OF THE COUNTRY. 



may still be seen on the south of the Arnon, is cut off by 
an attack unexpected as the thief in the night : so is Kir 
— ' Moab's Wall/ or ' Fortress,' — which, a castle on a rocky 
hill, a few miles south-east of Ar, still tells the traveller of 
its importance, by the remains of its church and mosque, 
and by the name of Karrak-Moba, which it gives to its no 
longer resident bishop, and to the whole tract which was 
once Moab. He sees the people with heads and beards 
shaven in token of grief, girt with sackcloth, dissolved in 
tears, and uttering loud lamentations ; going up to the 
high places of their gods at Bajith and at Dibon, to entreat 
for aid ; wandering through the streets ; collecting in the 
market-places, or open squares near the gate, where the 
last news of the enemy, or of the plans of the government, 
might be heard; or retiring to their house-tops to suppli- 
cate their household gods, or mourn in private over the 
fate of their families and themselves.* Heshbon, the royal 
city of the Amorites ; bestowed on Reuben and on Gad 
and his Levites at different times ; famous for its fish-pools, 
and, like the neighbouring Elealeh, still to be found by 
name in the highlands of Gilead opposite Jericho ; makes 
its cry of despair — a cry which even the warriors of Moab 
raise instead of their battle-shout — heard afar, for men's 
very souls are terror-stricken. The prophet may have 
little love for Moab, but his heart cannot but be touched 
by such utter woe ; for he sees the whole people flying 
from their houses, towards Zoar on their southern frontier, 
as their father Lot had once fled to the same city in his 
extremity. They fly as the heifer in her prime and when 
her voice is deepest flies from the first attempt to bring 

* Vitringa quotes Justin's description of Athens (lib. v. c. 7), when news 
had arrived of the loss of Conon and his arm)' : ' Quae cuncta cum Athenis 
nunciata essent, omnes relictis domibus per urbem discurrere pavidi ; alius 
alium sciscitari ; auctorem nuncii requirere ; non pueros imprudentia ; non 
senes debilitas ; non mulicres sexus imbecillitas domi tenet : adeo ad omnem 
setatem tanti mali sensus penetraverat. In poro deinde coeunt, atque ibi 
perpeti nocte fortunam publicam questibus iterant. Alii fratres, Alios, aut 
patres, deflent,' &c. &c. And of Caithage (lib. xix. c. 2), after the de- 
struction of Imilco's army in Sicily : * Quae res cum nunciata Carthagini essei , 
moesta civitas fuit ; omnia ululatibus, non secus ac si urbs ipsa capta esset, 
personabant Cuncii deinde ad portum congregantiir,' &c. Com- 
pare, too, the descriptions of Syracuse expecting the Carthaginians; and <f 
the population of Himera, Agrigentum, and Gela, flying from them. — Grote's 
History of Greece, x. 599. 



ISAIAH XVI. i — 14. THE TRIBUTE OF LAMBS. 201 



her under the yoke : he sees them weeping as they go up 
the hill of Luhith, on their way to Zoar, and he hears 
their cries of despair as they descend again by the road of 
Horonaim. Then half-retaining, half-changing the image 
of the heifer, the prophet explains the cause of their night 
to be, that the waters and consequently the green fields of 
Nimrim, or Nimra, near Heshbon which, because it had 
the rare blessing of water, was a fertile valley, and a coveted 
pasture for cattle,* 'are desolate,' — struck by drought, 
whether conceived as a poetical image or as the actual 
result of the cutting of water-courses in war. The invader 
is upon them, and their only remaining chance is to cross 
the 1 Brook of Willows ' (now called Wady-el-Ahsa, and 
forming now, as then, the boundary of the land), carrying 
with them what they can of the wealth which long peace 
had enabled them to accumulate. The cry and the wailing 
spread even beyond the frontiers of Moab, and shall be 
heard at the ■ Well of Princes,' where Israel once found 
water in the desert, and in their joy sang that song, ' Spring, 
0 Well,' destined to endure with their own name for ever. 
The channel of Dimon shall run blood instead of water : and 
if any escape the sword, upon them Jehovah will bring the 
lion : — a threat which may indicate still repeated devasta- 
tions by the invaders, or it may — in better harmony with the 
context — be understood literally, as it seems to point to 
some calamity to follow after these invaders have done 
their worst. We have accounts of the actual appearance 
of lions on the west bank of the Jordan, the thickets of 
which they seem to have frequented. As long as national 
order and prosperity continued, the wild beasts would be 
kept under, and driven back to their woods and moun- 
tains ; but in times of anarchy, when the population was 
diminished, the fields not fenced in, the cattle not watched, 
and the roads not kept in constant use by traffic, they 
would prowl in quest of prey through the land. 

The expression of ' sending the lamb ' is clearly ex- 
plained by the account already referred to, of the mode in 
which the tribute of Moab was paid during its dependence 
on Israel. A more difficult question arises from the 

* Numbers xxxii. 3, 36 : Josh. xiii. 27. 



202 



SELA, AND THE WILDERNESS. 



mention of Sela — ' the Rock' — which it seems most 
straightforward to take here, as in 2 Kings xiv. 7, to be 
Petra, the chief city of Edom : and we must then suppose 
that it had fallen into the power of Moab, perhaps at the 
time when this nation made itself obnoxious to the denun- 
ciation of Amos, Isaiah's elder contemporary, for some 
savage outrage on Edom ; * or that Sela is here mentioned, 
not as in possession of Moab, but to indicate that the 
required nocks would be collected most conveniently in 
the pasture grounds near that city, whether they already 
belonged to the Moabites, or were to be purchased from 
Edom. The ' wildernesses' and ' deserts ' of the Bible 
answer (with due allowance for the difference of climate 
and consequent vegetation) to what we call moors or 
commons, uninhabited, but fit for pasture. The* wilder- 
ness here referred to was probably the tract between Petra 
and Judaea, which Strabo calls eprj/jios, and Jerome deser- 
tum ; and Sela may have been the head-station of the 
shepherds who frequented these plains with their vast 
flocks, and where they found protection and water such as 
Uzziah is said to have provided for his flocks by making 
' towers and wells in the desert.' 

Isaiah, after declaring the woes that are coming on the^ 
people of Moab, calls them to submit themselves again to 
their rightful lord-paramount, by sending the tribute as in 
former times. The image of the Daughter of Zion sitting 
in royal dignity suggests that of the daughters of Moab in 
flight ; and this the two images, of the undignified peasant 
or female slave wading through a river, and of young 
birds losing their nest and struggling at the risk of their 
lives.t And then the abrupt turn of expression seems 
to indicate a sudden consciousness of the apparent im- 
propriety of a Jew in the unhappy reign of Ahaz — when 
his own country was in the depths of humiliation and 
distress — thus addressing the haughty Moab which was still 
in all its prosperity and pride, and at the very moment 
a place of refuge for the Israelites who were flying from 
their own land to avoid military inroads on every side, and 
also the extortion of tribute, which, from the way in which 

* Amos ii. 1. f Compare chap, xlvii. 1 — 9. 



THE PRIDE OF MOAB. 



203 



Isaiah constantly speaks of it, would seem to have been 
collected by the Assyrians themselves : and therefore, 
while repeating the prediction which he had lately made 
to the Philistines, that the throne of David would shortly 
be established in its former power, and giving this as the 
reason why Moab had better return to his allegiance, the 
prophet makes it also a reason why meanwhile the Hebrew 
fugitives should be treated with less pride and wrath. 

The old way of understanding this as the address of 
Isaiah to Moab seems to me to give a more coherent sense 
than the modern supposition, that it is the petition of 
Moab which accompanies the lambs. 

But, the prophet adds, such arguments will be in vain ; 
we know his proud and cruel character too well. This 
insolence is spoken of as the national character of Moab 
and Ammon by Jeremiah (xlviii. 27 — 30) and Zephaniah 
(ii. 8 — 10), and we find Sanballat of Horonaim (in Moab), 
and Tobiah the Ammonite, mocking, in the old spirit of 
their people, the builders of Jerusalem under Nehemiah. 
But his pride shall not prevail ; his boasting will prove a 
lie in the end. The land of Moab was famous then, as it 
is still, for its pastures and its vineyards ; and in renew- 
ing his warning of the destruction at hand, Isaiah now 
takes his images from the latter, as before from the former, 
feature of the country. He sees 1 Heshbon and Elealeh, 
and the flowery dale of Sibmah clad with vines,' wasted 
by the ruthless invaders, who break down those plants so 
famous for their choice fruit, and so luxuriant in their 
growth, that nature and man combined to carry them 
beyond the limits of the desert and over the sea. This 
' sea ' may either be the Dead Sea, or, as J eremiah under- 
stands it, a lake at Jazer, though none has been found 
there now. The prophet's sympathy is so excited that he 
weeps for Sibmah, as Jazer and its people themselves may 
weep ; and if their watercourses are cut off, he will supply 
the loss with his tears. The wheat and barley were the 
spring-harvest ; but the joy of the summer-harvest, when 
the fruits, the olives and the grapes, were gathered in to 
repay the toils of the year, would be the greater : but the 
singing and the shouting in the vineyard and at the wine- 



ANIMAL AND SPIRITUAL LIFE. 



press are not now heard ; their vintage-shout has ceased, 
for other gatherers and treaders are come, and the battle- 
shout is heard in its stead. 

Kir-hareseth and Kir-haresh are understood to be other 
names for Kir-Moab, mentioned above. Sibmah was in 
the neighbourhood of Heshbon. The expression ' my 
bowels shall sound like a harp for Moab,' employs a 
favourite image of the Hebrew poets. The ancients 
would not have understood the feeling which makes such 
allusions repulsive to modern taste, while we acknowledge 
their appropriateness and force. We shrink from such 
undisguised mention, in words, of the more grossly animal 
functions, just as we do from the unrestrained utterance of 
such ' howlings ' as are attributed to Moab in the chapters 
before us, and which would not have seemed degrading to 
a Greek or Roman any more than to a Hebrew. And the 
best explanation is that which has been given of the latter 
fact by the author of 'Guesses at Truth;' namely, that 
Christianity has so clearly established the distinction 
between flesh and spirit, that every man, woman, and 
child can feel it to be disgraceful that our animal nature 
should, even under the most trying circumstances, have its 
own way, and cease to be under the authority of our 
human will. Self-possession and self-control are no longer 
virtues to be exhibited only by great men on great 
occasions, but to be the ordinary habit of all of us at all 
times. 

When Moab finds that he is wearying himself to no 
purpose by his sacrifices on the high places, he shall try 
whether prayers in his temples will be more effectual ; but 
both shall be in vain. These judgments have been hang- 
ing over the head of Moab from of old : but now the time 
of their accomplishment is near ; it shall be within three 
years, to be understood literally and precisely, as they 
would be in the hiring a servant for such a term. There 
is no occasion, though no objection (except what lies 
against all unnecessary conjectures), to suppose that verses 
13 and 14 are a postscript added to the prophecy, itself of 
earlier date : it is just as easy to understand them as parts 
of one whole. 



MOAB A PERSON. 



205 



We may notice here, though the observation applies 
equally to all like occasions, that Moab is a Person in the 
eyes of the prophet ; for this much better expresses the 
case than to speak of a personification. This sense of 
the corporate unity of a nation was much stronger among 
the ancients, as it was in the middle ages, than anything we 
feel now in our political communities, which are so much 
larger, and with such much more complicated interests 
than those of former times. Our old legal forms, by which 
an association of men is ' incorporated,' with perpetual suc- 
cession, power to sue and be sued, and to use a common 
seal, as though a single person ; as well as those which 
erect individual personages, such as the sovereign, the 
bishop, the parson, and so on, into ' corporations sole,' with 
the legal powers of a corporate body ; are illustrations of 
the mediaeval feeling. If we have lost something, we have 
also gained something by the change ; for it has been 
effected in a great degree by a growth and expansion of 
patriotism towards philanthropy, if it must also in some 
respects be referred to a depression of the patriotic by the 
selfish temper.* 

Jeremiah has recast component parts of this prophecy 
in a new form ; as he has the prophecies against Babylon ; 
and in each case with the same indications that he is not 
the original author. 

Many modern commentators hold this ' Burden of Moab ' 
to be by an older prophet than Isaiah, to whom they 
attribute only the two last verses (xvi. 13, 14) : their 
reasons, from supposed peculiarities of style and sentiment, 
are such as. I have already argued to be too merely hypo- 
thetical for historical criticism. 

* M. de Bunsen gives an interesting statement of tlie philosophic grounds 
— of the essentially real and rational basis — of the personality of societies as 
well as individuals ; and of its adequate realization in the Christian Church. 
• — Hippolytus and his Age, ii. 32 — 52, 1st Edition. Mr. Freeman, too, has 
treated the subject in his Essay on Public and Private Morality, in the 
Fortnightly Review for April, 1873. 



CHAPTER XII. 



ISAIAH XVII., XVIII. DAMASCUS, EPHRAlM, AND ETHIOPIA. — PROBABLE DATE 

AND UNITY OP THIS PROPHECY. — THE RUSH OF NATIONS. — THE GENERAL 
PANIC. — WORLDLY ALLIANCES. — GOD'S DELIVERANCE.— NOTION THAT THE 
DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB' S ARMY IS A MYTH NOT "WELL FOUNDED. 

THE old division between chapters xvii. and xviii. (as in 
the Authorized Version) may indicate the opinion that 
a distinct prophecy begins with the latter chapter, though 
it might remain a question whether verses 12, 13, and 14 
of the former one were a fragment detached from both, or 
the conclusion of that entitled ' The Burden of Damascus,' 
but which relates still more to Ephraim, the ally of 
Damascus at the beginning of the reign of Ahaz. The 
modern opinion is in favour of considering that the former 
prophecy ends with verse 1 1 of chapter xvii. ; and that its 
date is the same as that of chapter viii. — ix, 7, namely, 
the year in which the northern tribes of Israel were carried 
away by Assyria, and which deportation is supposed to 
have taken place the year before that of the inhabitants of 
Damascus. And the remaining verses of chapter xvii. are 
taken as the beginning of a new prophecy ending with the 
end of chapter xviii., from which they should not have 
been divided ; while its date is referred to the same period 
as that of chapter xx., when the Assyrians were actually 
beginning to overflow the borders of Judah, and the 
ministers and people of Hezekiah "were looking to Tir- 
hakeh, king of Ethiopia and Egypt, for help. 

Yet there is some force in the argument that in this 
part of the book, where a series of titles seems to define 
the beginning and end of each portion, we should take the 
two chapters as one whole ; that the under-current of 
thought common to verses 11 and 14 of chapter xvii., and 



DAMASCUS AND EPHRAIM. 



207 



verse 5 of chapter xviii., and the vyn with which verse 12 
of chapter xvii., and verse 1 of chapter xviii. begins, are in 
favour of the continuity of the text ; and that there is 
also a unity of idea pervading this whole, and correspond- 
ing with that which we have noticed running through 
chapters vii., viii., ix., x., xi., xii., and giving them greatly 
the character of a continuous whole, though that whole 
may be made up of portions originally separate. The 
train of ideas which unites those chapters is, that Judah 
need not fear the hostile alliance of Syria and Ephraim 
against her, nor yet seek for help from Assyria or Egypt, 
if only she will trust in her own Lord, and true Protector ; 
that since she will not trust in him, she shall be herself over- 
whelmed by the heathen powers she calls in, and thus 
punished for her own loss of faith, and propensity to idols, 
even though these powers deliver her from her immediate 
alarm ; but that at the last a righteous king shall reign in 
Sion over the restored remnant of both Judah and Ephraim, 
and all the nations of the earth shall acknowledge his do- 
minion. And a similar thread of thought may be found 
running through the two chapters now before us, — which 
open with the destruction of Damascus and Israel ; refer the 
calamities of the latter to his abandonment of his true Lord, 
who shall yet preserve a remnant of his people ; and 
predict the destruction of the Assyrian as soon as he has 
fulfilled his office of the scourge of God, and the recog- 
nition of the Name of the Lord of hosts by Egypt and 
Ethiopia. There is an essential resemblance between the 
two, with a difference in the proportions of their parts : 
Damascus and Ephraim become less prominent in the 
latter than the former, while the slight mention of Egypt 
in verse 18 of chapter vii., apparently indicating that the 
politicians of the day were just thinking of the possibility 
of an alliance with that power, is replaced by a reference 
to the altered state of things when that alliance was 
actively promoted by the government of Hezekiah, as their 
only support against Assyria. It appears from Sargon's 
Inscription at Khorsabad — from which I have already 
given the detailed account"" — that after taking Samaria 



* Page 193. 



208 



DATE OF THIS PROPHECY. 



he went to Philistia, and there gained a victory over 
Sevechus, king of Egypt, on his advancing to the sup- 
port of the Philistine tributaries of Assyria, who were in 
rebellion, and had allied themselves with Egypt ; and 
though we shall see that the events to which chapter xx. 
relates may belong to a later date and another campaign 
than this, there is no reason why the Ethiopians should not 
have now sent an embassy to Judsea in anticipation of an 
advance of Sargon to the south : and then there will be 
no chronological difficulty in taking these two chapters 
(xvii. and xviii.) as one prophecy delivered about the time 
of Sargon' s capture of Samaria. 

Damascus, which is mentioned in the history of 
Abraham, and is still a flourishing city iu western Asia, 
was the capital of one of the five principal states of Syria, 
and was therefore called Syria of Damascus. It was subju- 
gated by David,* but successfully revolted against Solomon. 
Thenceforth it was commonly at war with Israel, so that 
a three years' peace in the reign of Ahab is recorded 
as a long one. With the alliance of its last king Rezin 
with Pekah, king of Israel, and its results, we are already 
familiar. 

There are two Aroers mentioned on the east of Jordan, 
one near the Arnon, and the other to the north, and near 
the Ammonite city of Rabbah ;f and the cities of Aroer 
here spoken of may be the cities and villages of Gad and 
Reuben in the district between the two Aroers, or more 
immediately about the northern one, which will connect 
them with the deportation of Tiglath-Pileser, referred to 
on former occasions. 

The prophet threatens the two nations with a common 
destruction : the glory of Damascus shall be as the glory 
of Israel in the day in which the strength of the latter is 
wasted away with the emaciation of mortal disease, and 
his wealth is carried away as the whole crop of corn is car- 
ried away in harvest time. But then Isaiah substitutes an 
image not so strong : the gleaner follows the reaper of 
corn, and leaves nothing behind ; but the most active 

* 1 Kings xi. 23, 24, xxii. 1. 

f Josh. xii. 2, xiii. 16 — 25; Num"b. xxxii. 34. 



THE RUSH OF NATIONS. 209 

shaking and beating of the olive-tree leaves a few berries 
on the uppermost boughs ; and such a remnant will be left 
of Israel, though the once strong cities of the nation will 
be reduced to the humblest, most defenceless condition. 
Such a remnant we know did, after the general deportation 
of the ten tribes, accept Hezekiah's invitation, and return 
to the right worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem, as they did 
again in the time of Josiah.* In that day the judgment on 
the nation, and the mercy shown to the penitent few, will 
alike bear witness against their past idolatries and forget- 
fulness of the God of their salvation. And then Isaiah, in 
his usual manner, blends with the previous image of the 
Assyrians reaping a harvest of cities and their inhabitants, 
the new one of the Israelites transplanting heathen gods into 
their worship, and reaping God's abandonment of their 
nation as the fruit ; while both images connect them- 
selves in the mind with the thought of the actual wasting 
of fields and vineyards through the country, by the ruth- 
less invaders. 

On a former occasion Isaiah had said, ' Jehovah spake 
unto me, saying, Forasmuch as this people refuseth the 
waters of Siloah that go softly, and rejoice in Eezin and 
Eemaliah's son ; now therefore behold, the Lord bringeth 
up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, 
the king of Assyria, and all his glory : and he shall come 
up over all his channels, and go over all his banks ; and 
he shall pass through Judah ; he shall overflow and go 
over, he shall reach even to the neck ; and the stretching 
out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, 0 Im- 
manuel.' And now he hears the sound of these mighty 
and many waters, while ' the nations rush like the rushing 
of many waters,' and ' make a noise like the noise of the 
seas.'t But he is calm and self-possessed as ever ; he holds 
to his old faith and doctrine : ' God shall rebuke them, and 
they shall flee afar off, like chaff when the wind whirls it 
from the threshing-floor on the hill-side.' 

* 2 Chron. xxx. 11 ; xxxiv. 6, 9. 

f ' Qualia fluctus 
iEquorei faciunt, si quis procul audiat ipsos, 
Tale sonat populus.* 

Ovid. Met. xv. 604. (Alexander from Clericus.) 

P 



2 I O 



EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA. 



Though the general sense of the eighteenth chapter is 
clear, there is great doubt as to the translation and meaning 
of particular phrases. It is not agreed whether ' shadowing 
with wings,' or ' rustling with wings,' or ' of the winged 
cymbal ' be the proper rendering ; nor whether (to leave 
less likely explanations) it refers to the mountain ridges, or 
the armies (as in chapter viii. 8), or the boats with sails 
or shaped like the cymbal. It is questioned whether the 
' sea ' in verse 2 is the Nile, or the Red Sea, or the Medi- 
terranean.; and also what is the meaning of the epithets 
applied to the ' people ' and ' nation ' in verses 2 and 7, 
and whether these are to be taken to indicate Egypt and 
Ethiopia respectively, or both together as one power under 
Sabaco, or Tirhakeh. But the general sense is that Egypt 
and Ethiopia, like Philistia and Moab, share the general 
alarm at the approach of the great northern conqueror ; 
and, as in the case of Philistia, they send ambassadors to 
Jerusalem, to propose an alliance against the common foe ; 
and the prophet in reply tells them to go back and tell 
their countrymen — of whom he speaks in terms of unusual 
respect — that Jehovah will defend his own without the 
help of man. He calls on them, and on all the earth to 
expect the signal of a great deliverance, which shall come 
with a sudden blow from Jehovah, who is at present wait- 
ing for the fulness of time, keeping the world in a suspense 
like the stillness of a noonday heat, yet giving those who 
trust in him a quiet confidence, like that dewy cloud which 
supplies a certain freshness even in the midst of such heat. 

We may notice again Isaiah's usual accuracy and appro- 
priateness of thought, in reference to the Egyptian traffic 
by water, and especially to the light papyrus boats* — 
to the tallness and beauty of the Ethiopians! — and to 
their land which ' the rivers divide ; ' also the change of 

* * Conseritur bibula Memphitis cymba papyro ;' Lucaniv. 136. So Pliny 
says (xiii. 11), 'Ex ipso quidam papyro navigia texunt.' Both quoted by 
Lowth. 

f ' fxeyivTOi Kai koXhttoi avQpwiruv ttcivtidv,'' Herodotus iii. 29, 114 : quoted 
by Knobel, who also gives references to other writers, modern as well as 
ancient, as to these characteristics of the Ethiopians. The Hebrew words, 
which I have rendered ' tall ' and ' comely,' are properly ' stretched out ' and 
* smooth,' but probably with the sense I have given. In chapter xlv. 14, they 
are called ' men of stature.' 



A SUPPOSED MYTH. 



211 



the word ' nation ' in verse 2 into ' people ' in verse 7, — 
the formerly properly designating a heathen, and the 
latter a believing people. 

The remarkable correspondence between the predictions 
in verses 13, 14 of chapter xvii. and verses 3 — 7 of 
chapter xviii., with the historical account of the sudden 
overthrow of Sennacherib, has induced some of the 
Germans to pronounce that the latter is a myth framed 
to agree with the prophecy. As the reaction against the 
contrary assertion that the prediction is miraculous, such 
a notion is perhaps not to be wondered at ; but the really 
rational, as well as really Christian student, may come to 
the conclusion that if we take the facts of the case, the 
prophecy and the history as they actually are, it is possible 
to discover something more of the meaning, and law, of 
prophecy and the prophetic faculty, than has been dis- 
covered, or than will be discovered, by combining either 
scepticism or superstition with grammatical and antiquarian 
knowledge. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



ISAIAH XIX. — EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES IN THE TIME OF ISAIAH — CONTEMPORARY 

OR SUCCESSIVE. HISTORICAL NOTICES FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. ANARCHY. 

- — INVASION OF S ARGON. — SACK OF THEBES. — TREATY BETWEEN EGYPT 

AND ASSYRIA. MULTITUDE OF GODS AND OF CASTES UNFAVOURABLE TO 

POLITICAL UNITY. — EXCLUSIVE WISDOM OF PRIESTHOOD. — THE CITY OF 
DESTRUCTION. — ALEXANDER AND PTOLEMY. — TEMPLE OF ONIAS. — SEPTUA- 
GINT. — PHILO. — CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA. — BACON ON PROPHECY. 

' rjlHE Burden of Egypt.' Within the limits of Isaiah's 
lifetime, we find kings of the Bubastite, Tanitic, Saitic, 
and Ethiopian dynasties reigning in Egypt, with their 
respective seats of government at Sais in the west, Tanis 
in the east, and Thebes in the south. The wise king 
Bocchoris, of Sais, who laboured to define and enforce the 
rights of his people by just and liberal laws, was conquered, 
and burnt alive by Sabacon, or Sabak I., the king of 
Ethiopia, who thus founded an Ethiopian dynasty in 
Egypt. His successor, Sabak II., whom Manetho calls 
Sebichos and the Jews So (Seve), made an alliance with 
Hoshea, king of Samaria, to support him in his refusal of 
continued vassalage to Shalmaneser. The first result of 
this alliance was the capture of Samaria by the Assyrians, 
with the final deportation of the people, and the substitu- 
tion of a colony from some other part of the Assyrian 
empire. The next (whether as motive or pretext) appears 
to have been Sargon's invasion of Egypt. In Isaiah xx. 
we find Sargon's general laying siege to Ashdod, the most 
southern of the Philistian fortresses, which was supported 
by the Egyptian and Ethiopian kings of whose country it 
was the key, as Gaza and El-Arish respectively were in 
later times : and in Sargon's own account, which I have 
already quoted,* he says that after reducing both Gaza and 

* Page 193. 



CONDITION OF EGYPT. 



213 



Aslidod (whether in the same or different campaigns) he 
took vengeance on their Egyptian and Ethiopian allies. 
And though the mutilation of that part of the Inscription 
makes it doubtful whether he described an actual invasion 
of the kingdom of Meroe, or Ethiopia, it is not improbable 
that to this period we may refer the destruction mentioned 
by Isaiah's cotemporary, Nahimi, of the 'populous No- 
Ammon,' or Thebes, 'that was situate among the rivers, 
that had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the 
sea, and her wall was from the sea : Ethiopia and Egypt 
were her strength, and it was infinite ; Put and Lubim 
were her helpers. Yet she was carried away, she went 
into captivity : her young children also were dashed in 
pieces at the top of all the streets : and they cast lots for 
her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in 
chains.'* 

The invasion of Sargon accomplished Isaiah's threat of 
the ' cruel lord,' in the chapter before us, and his warn- 
ing, in the chapter immediately succeeding, of the fate 
which would befall Egypt and Ethiopia both, within a 
short period of the siege of Aslidod, then in progress. 
And that most interesting discovery t in Sennacherib's 
palace, of what can hardly be other than the seal of a 
treaty between Sabak and the Assyrian king, gives a 
literal (though by no means the highest) fulfilment of 
Isaiah's prediction of future amity between Egypt and 
Assyria. 

The general condition of Egypt was at this time one of civil 
war, anarchy, revolution, and foreign invasion. The several 
accounts are confused, and apparently incapable of complete 
reconciliation. M. Bunsen says that all Egyptologers are 
agreed that Manetho's dynasties between the eighteenth and 
thirtieth are not synchronous, though he elsewhere ex- 
plains that the regular succession of kings' names in these 
lists does not necessarily indicate that each was the actual 
ruler of the country during the period thus assigned to 
him, since their position may have been something like 

* Nahum iii. 8—10. 

f Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 156. The seal itself is in the British 
Museum. 



ISAIAH XIX. 1—25. ANARCHY: 



that of Louis XVII. and Louis XVIII. under the first 
French Ilepublic and Empire/" Yet Sennacherib speaks 
of conquering the kings of Egypt as well as the king of 
Meroe, in his second campaign ; Herodotus connects the 
overthrow of the Assyrian army with Sethos (apparently 
the Tanitic Zet of Manetho) and not with Tirhakeh ; and 
the language of Isaiah in the chapter before us favours the 
supposition of contemporary kingdoms in Egypt at this time. 
He speaks of ' Egypt ' (not ' the Egyptians ' in the original) 
set against Egypt, ' city against city, and kingdom against 
kingdom,' and mentions ' the princes of Zoar,' or Tanis, 
and ' the princes of Noph,' or Memphis.! But however this 
may have been, those causes of political disentegration 
must have been already at work and discernible by Isaiah, 
which soon after broke up Egypt into the petty indepen- 
dent governments which the Greek historians called the 
Dodecarchy — an interregnum of fifteen years of civil wars 
between Sethos and Psammetichus. 

The name Mizraim, like Asshur, or Moab, is both that 
of the country and of the traditional founder : and here 
again we have Egypt as a person, the distinction being 
kept up in the original by the use of the masculine suffixes 
where our Version gives the neuter it. The opening words 
of this prophecy represent Jehovah, 'who maketh the 
clouds his chariot ' (probably here and elsewhere not with- 
out allusion to the cloud which led the Israelites, and 
hovered over the Mercy-seat), coming into Egypt to stir 
up civil war throughout the land. Egypt was famous for 
its multitude of gods, its minute political and social or- 
ganization of castes or tribes (verse 13), and the wisdom 
of its sages and counsellors. Perhaps Isaiah, in his con- 
temptuous mention of all these, and their inability to help 
the country in its anarchy, recognizes in them the very 
causes of that anarclry. The multitude of idols, and of 
hereditary castes, evidently must have been main hin- 
drances to national unity, since they supplied an in- 
definite number of separate foci, or ganglions, of social life, 
instead of the central heart and brain of the higher or- 

* Aegyptens Stelle, i. 121 ; iii. 128—146. 

t See, too, Canon Cook's Inscription of Pianchi Ifer-Amon, pp. 13, 14. 



CIVIL WAR AND CONQUEST. 



215 



ganization : and the wisdom of the priests and the initiated 
kings would have the same tendency, since they had made 
it their exclusive possession, and employed it, not for the 
enlightenment and education of the people, but as the 
most effective instrument of the priestcraft and statecraft 
which controlled a population numerous and aggregated 
like herds of cattle, but debased, and therefore isolated, as 
men. 

The realities of anarchy and civil war will confound the 
statesmen and their craft ; they will be utterly at a loss to 
propose means to remedy the evil, or to see what the end 
will be if things are left to themselves ; they will seek 
equally in vain for guidance from their idols and their 
soothsayers ; and at last another reality, the despotic rule 
of a cruel conqueror, will supersede both them and the 
anarchy they could not face with all their shams. 

The Nile (the sea as it is here and elsewhere called) was 
the source of fertility and life to Egypt, and its failure the 
certain occasion of general drought and famine ; and Isaiah 
employs its failure as the symbol, a real part of the whole 
which it represents, to describe the universality of the 
national distress. 

In the height of their calamity, they will think, first 
with fear, and then with hope, of Jehovah who is thus 
executing his counsels to the confounding of their own ; 
and they will turn their anxious looks to that people with 
whom their own nation has from ancient times been made 
to feel its relationship, in blessings as well as in judgments, 
through a Joseph no less than a Moses. And then Isaiah 
describes the deliverance of Egypt from its oppressors, and 
its participation in the faith and consequently in the 
blessing of Israel, in terms which were remarkably ful- 
filled in after times, again and again, with an amplitude 
which is at once an answer to the notion that he wrote 
after some one of the events, or that certain verses were 
interpolated to agree with some other. There is much 
doubt as to the verbal meaning of verse 18. 'The city of 
destruction ' is the true translation of the original, but its 
obscurity has led to various conjectural emendations, for an 
account of which, with the arguments for or against each, 



2 l6 



EGYPT UNDER THE GREEKS. 



I must refer the reader to the commentators. Calvin's 
explanation is that five-sixths of Egypt shall be saved, 
but the sixth part destroyed : an explanation characteristic 
of the stern reformer, who liked to contemplate judgment 
as an end, and not merely as a means, but which is far less 
suitable to the context tr an that which changes ' destruc- 
tion ' to ' salvation ' (Dnnn to Dnnn), and considers five to 
be a round number* to express 'many.' The interpreta- 
tion of it as a proper name, Leontopolis, or Heliopolis, is 
contrary, says Gesenius, to the use of the word ' called,' 
which Isaiah always appropriates to symbolic appellations. t 
It was not this, but the next verse, which Onias referred 
to in favour of his temple at Leontopolis, and therefore the 
argument for its having been interpolated by him seems 
sufficiently refuted, even if it could be explained how the 
Jews of Palestine accepted such an interpolation from 
the hated sectarian. The literal coincidences, however, 
between these details and the events, and among others 
between the promise of a ' saviour ' and a ' great one,' and 
the titles of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy the Saviour, 
are noticeable and interesting ; though he must be unob- 
servant of like coincidences in all history and daily life 
who is driven by them to choose between miracle and 
forgery. The general idea of Isaiah, however we may ex- 
plain details, is that the true faith of Israel will be widely 
spread through Egypt ; the altar and the pillar may be 
rather poetical images, taken from the history of the 
patriarchs^, than attempts to predict or prescribe actual 
mode of worship, though it is not impossible that the pro- 
phet may have conceived of such helps to their faith being 
lawful in that distant land, though forbidden to the Jews 
at. home, who were to sacrifice on no altar but at Jerusalem. 
In the main, however, he apparently contemplates Jerusa- 
lem itself as the actual place of worship, when he speaks 
of Egypt 'serving,' that is, worshipping Jehovah, with 
Assyria and Israel : yet we must not overlook the freedom 

from formal restrictions in his language, which thus anti- 
cs o ' 

* As it is in Genesis xliii. 34 ; xlv. 22 ; xlvii. 2. 

+ Chap. iv. 3 ; Ixi. 6 ; Ixii. 4. 

X Grotius refers to Joshua, xxii. 10—34. 



BACON ON PROPHECY. 



cipates the time when the true worshippers should worship 
the Father in spirit and in truth, and neither in this or 
that mountain, nor in J erusalem ; and still more note- 
worthy is the catholic spirit which could comprehend not 
only the comparatively friendly Egypt, but also Assyria, 
the cruellest of enemies, in Israel's own covenant of peace 
and blessing from Jehovah. 

The fulfilment of these promises to Eg}^pt was ample ; 
first beginning with the overthrow of Sargon's successor, 
Sennacherib, and the friendly intercourse with Hezekiah 
in the latter years of his reign ; and then extending 
through successive generations, beyond the troubles of the 
Dodecarchy, the conquest of Nebuchadnezzar, and the mad 
cruelty of Cambyses. Alexander the Great delivered them 
from the grievous Persian yoke, and he and his successors 
greatly favoured the people and improved the country. 
He settled a great many Jews in Alexandria, giving them 
equal privileges with the Macedonians ; and this Hebrew 
immigration was still farther promoted by Ptolemy Soter, 
so that Philo reckoned that in his time there were a 
million Jews in the country. The temple of Onias, the 
Septuagint version of the Bible, the books of the Apocrypha, 
the philosophy and theology of Philo, indicate not only 
what these Jews were in themselves, but enable us to infer 
with certainty how great must have been their example 
and influence in humanizing the Egyptians, and bringing 
them to the knowledge and worship of the true God. And 
still more were these results apparent, still more amply 
was this prophecy fulfilled, when Alexandria became one of 
the great centres of the Christian Church. There are 
other instances as real, but there is hardly one more strik- 
ing, of the correctness of Lord Bacon's rule that, in these 
interpretations, we must ' allow the latitude which is 
agreeable and familiar unto divine prophecies ; being of 
the nature of their Author, with whom a thousand years are 
but as one day ; and therefore are not fulfilled punctually 
at once, but have springing and germinant accomplish- 
ment throughout many ages ; though the height or fulness 
of them may refer to some one age.'* 

* Advancement of Learning, book ii. 3. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



isaiah xx. — sargon, shalmaneser, tartan. — the siege of ashdod. — shebna's 
policy. — isaiah's symbolical protest against it. — he walks naked 
and barefoot. — isaiah's policy probably more expedient — certainly 
more befitting israel's place in universal history. 

THE name of Sargon occurs nowhere in the Bible except 
in the chapter before us : but the Inscriptions of 
this king — Sargina, or Sarrukin — from which I have 
already given some extracts, show him to have been not 
inferior in war or peace to his son Sennacherib. From 
the time of Sanctius and Jungmann (quoted by Vitringa) 
to the present day, there has been much learned discussion 
as to whether the Shalmaneser of the Bible and of Josephus 
was the same with Sargon, or his immediate predecessor : 
but the recent discovery* of the annals of Shalmaneser, in 
their proper place between those of Tiglath-Pileser and 
Sargon, must — unless their interpretation is disputed — 
decide the question, as it had indeed already been decided 
on the ground of comparative probability, by the greater 
number of the Assyriologists. I shall therefore not here 
re-open the discussion, nor that, which has been connected 
with it, whether Sargon was the hereditary king, or a suc- 
cessful rebel. But there can be no doubt that the Sargon 
of Isaiah is the Sargina who built the city of which the 

* ' Among the other treasures brought hack from Assyria by Mr. George 
Smith is a small fragment which fits on to the fasti tablet published in 
W. A. I. ii. 52, 1. It definitely settles the question as to the reign of a Shal- 
maneser between Tiglath Pileser and Sargon. Tiglath-Pileser, we find, in 
his last year, ' took the lands of Bel' a second time. Then comes the dividing 
line, and the statement of Shalmaneser's accession to the throne. According 
to the next line, the king remained at home during the eponym of the Prefect 
of Amida, but the three following years were occupied in campaigns against 
a country or countries the names of which are unfortunately lost. After this, 
we have the dividing line again, and a notice of Sargon's accession.' — The 
Academy, Oct. 15, 1873, p. 400, 



ISAIAH XX. i — 6. S ARGON. 



219 



site is now called Khorsabad, but which retained the name 
of Sarghun as late as the Arab conquest. The remains of 
Sargon' s palace were discovered by M. Botta ; and M. 
Oppert has published the chief Inscription found there, 
with Latin and French translations, as well as translations 
of two other Inscriptions of the same king.* His con- 
quests through fifteen campaigns extended from Babylonia 
and Susiana in the south to Armenia and Cappadocia in 
the north, and from Media in the east (where he built 
cities to which he transplanted the conquered populations 
of other lands in the usual way), to Syria, Arabia and 
Egypt in the west : he claims to have taken Tyre, and to 
have received tribute from the king of 'Yatnan' (Cyprust) 
who dwelt at seven days' distance in the midst of the sea, 
and whose names had been unknown to the kings his 
fathers from the remotest times. A monument of Sargon, 
now in the Berlin museum, was found in Cyprus ; and 
Josephus* states on the authority of Menander that Cyprus 
was about this time subject to Tyre, and that the king of 
Assyria besieged Tyre for five years, having previously 
reduced all the east of Phoenicia to submission. Tartan 
is said to be not a proper name but the common title of 
the Assyrian commanders in chief. § After he had taken 
Ashdod, it possibly continued in the power of the As- 
syrians till it was besieged, as Herodotus relates, || for 
twenty-nine years by Psammetichus. It is now a little 
village, retaining its old name. From the words of the 
Khorsabad Inscription which I have already quoted, it 
would seem that Ashdod was twice taken by Sargon ; and 
this siege is apparently the second of the two. 

In the third year of Hezekiah, Hoshea, king of Samaria, 
had brought Shalmaneser's overwhelming power upon him 
by refusing his accustomed tribute, and calling in So, king 

* Les Inscriptions Assyriennes des Sargonides, par Jules Oppert, 1862. Grande 
Inscription du Palais de Khorsabad, 1863. Sir Henry Rawlinson has given 
a detailed account of these Inscriptions in his Commentary, from which (as 
well aa from those of M. Oppert) I have already quoted. 

f ' Itanus sur l'lle de Crete, et puis nom de l'lle de Chypre/ — Oppert, In- 
scriptions des Sargonides, p. 21. 

% Ant. ix. 14, 2. 

§ Lavard's Nineveh and Babylon, p. 148, note. 
|| ii. 157. 



220 



POLICY OF SHEBNA . 



of Egypt, to support him in his rebellion. Yet this was 
now the policy contemplated by the government and 
people of Hezekiah. The vassalage into which Ahaz had 
brought Judah was no doubt intolerable : Isaiah's repeated 
references to the ' oppressors,' ' the spoilers,' and the 
' robbers,' indicate what we might expect from the character 
of the Assyrians, — that the tribute was almost the whole 
produce of the country, such as has been requisite to buy off 
the hordes of Huns, Tartars, or Mahrattas, of other times : 
and since the Assyrian armies were constantly on the bor- 
ders of the little kingdom of Judah — during the sieges 
of Samaria, Tyre, Ashdod, and elsewhere — probably all 
payments were insufficient to protect the Jews from the 
rapacious licence of a soldiery whose royal leader could 
fix 1 three hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents of 
gold,' as the price of amity with Hezekiah, and then 
immediately on receiving payment march on Jerusalem 
with the avowed determination to ' destroy it utterly,' 
after deporting the inhabitants. Any prospect might 
seem better than the existing misery : and if Hoshea's 
alliance with Sebichos had only hastened the ruin of the 
kingdom of Ephraim, Judah hoped for a more suc- 
cessful result from the like policy. We have, perhaps, in 
chapter xviii. 2, an indication that the Ethiopico-Egyptian 
king had himself proposed such an alliance ; and it is 
plain from chapters xxxi. xxxii. that the Jewish govern- 
ment made advances on their side ; while in the chapter 
before us Isaiah seems to describe the general feeling of 
his countrymen when he speaks of ' Ethiopia their expecta- 
tion, and Egypt their glory.' A policy in which one state 
is to be played off against another, and perhaps by one 
weaker than either, always seems the height of wisdom to 
the crafty diplomatists who play the game, and worse than 
folly to the looker on : and such was the policy of Shebna, 
Hezekiah' s minister, — in his own eyes no doubt ' a politi- 
cian who could circumvent God,'"" — and such the opinion 
of it entertained by Isaiah, one of whose energetic protests 
against it we have before us. He, as well as his children, 
was £ a sign to the people,' and not only like them by his 

* Hamlet, v. 1. 



ISAIAH'S SYMBOLICAL PROTEST. 221 



name and presence, but he now appeared — probably while 
the result of the siege of Ashdod was still doubtful, and 
the public expectation in Jerusalem at its height — naked 
and barefoot, that is, without the hair garment which, girt 
with a leathern girdle, was the prophet's dress, as it was 
of the Christian ascetics in after times.* He appeared, in 
fact, as the writers of the middle ages would have ex- 
pressed it, ' in his shirt : ' for this is a usual meaning of 
the phrase, ' naked,' in Hebrew, as in all languages, and 
one which is moreover indicated here by the ' barefoot,' 
which would be otherwise superfluous, as well as by the 
additional description of the captives he figured. The 
Masoretic punctuation joins the ' three years' with the 
words that follow, in which case the sentence may be 
rendered ' a three years' sign' and understood not that 
Isaiah walked for three years, but that the event was to 
occur in three years : and the prediction would thus 
somewhat correspond in form with that in chapter xvi. 14. 
Vitringa and Lowth suppose that, in fact, Isaiah walked 
three days, 'a day for a year;'"]* others consider the 
symbolical act to have been occasional, though repeated 
throughout the three years. There is nothing improbable 
in this last view ; it is that most in agreement with the 
letter of the text ; and there is an apj)earance of the 
chapter being a brief account of the three years' preaching 
(perhaps the time the siege was going on), during which 
Isaiah used to appear as described, and speaking to this 
effect. Even taken thus literally this symbolic act is far less 
difficult to comprehend than some of those of other prophets : 
but in all cases a part of the difficulty arises, no doubt, 
from our inability to realize adequately the habits and 
feelings of an ancient and eastern people. To those of 
Isaiah's countrymen who were not hardened against all 
such impressions, the sight of the prophet and the sound 
of his warning voice in the streets and market-places of 
Jerusalem, while he showed forth the impending fate of 
their expected deliverers, and thus led them to infer their 

* See 2 Kings i. 8 ; Zech. xiii. 4 ; Matt. iii. 4. TYiner compares the 
pallium of the Greek philosophers with the prophet's mantle, 
f Compare Numbers xiv. 34 ; Ezekiel iv. 6. 



222 



POLICY 01 ISAIAH: 



own, would have been full of significance. I have noticed 
before the practice of driving the prisoners of war naked 
and like herds of cattle : the word here translated ' lead 
away' is that usually applied to leading or driving cattle ; 
and the monuments of Egypt, as well as Assyria, still 
depict such strings of captives, naked, or with merely an 
apron, and frequently with their hands bound with their 
own hair. One of Belzoni's drawings of tombs at Thebes, 
says Gesenius, exhibits both Ethiopian and Egyptian pri- 
soners in this way. 

We see from Isaiah's subsequent denunciations of the 
Egyptian alliance, that the ground of them was, that the 
people of Israel should trust in Jehovah their own King 
for deliverance, and in no other power whatever. Though 
he encouraged Hezekiah to the boldest defiance and most 
resolute resistance of Sennacherib at the last, there is no 
indication that he advised or approved his first refusal of 
the tribute which Ahaz had consented to pay : on the 
contrary, the whole tenour of the prophet's discourses 
is, that the subjection to the Assyrian yoke was a 
needful though harsh discipline for the nation ; that 
Jehovah would himself effect their deliverance in due 
time ; and that they were to wait patiently till then.* This 
simple and entire trust in Jehovah, as the Head of the 
nation, and of each member of it in particular, — as their 
actual Ruler, and ever-present Friend, watching over them 
every moment with the care of a Husband and a Father, 

* As a modern writer has charged Jeremiah with treachery worthy of 
death, in preaching submission to Nebuchadnezzar, it is worth while to see 
how his conduct looked to one who had opportunity, and was competent, to 
interpret it by the political experience of his own day. Niebuhr, writing, 
Jan. 10, 1809, of the abortive desires of Stein and others to throw off the 
yoke of Napoleon, saj T s, ' I told you, as I told every one, how indignant I 
felt at the senseless prating of those who talked of desperate resolves as of a 
tragedy. Ever since the peace of Tilsit, my maxims have been those which 
Phocion preached to the Athenians of his age ; and nowhere have I seen, 
among the declaimers on the other side, a Demosthenes, or even a Hy- 
perides, but many a Diaeus. To bear our fate with dignity and wisdom, 
that the yoke might be lightened, was my doctrine, and I supported it with 
the advice of the prophet Jeremiah, who spoke and acted very wisely, living 
as he did under King Zedekiah, in the times of Nebuchadnezzar, though he 
would have given different counsel had he lived under Judas Maccabseus, in 
the times of Antiochus Epiphanes : ' Seek the peace of the city whither I 
have caused you to be carried away captives ; for in the peace thereof shall 
ye have peace.' ' — Niebuhr' s Life, vol. i. p. 261. 



ITS PRACTICAL SOUNDNESS. 



223 



— this is the master-light of all Isaiah's philosophy, moral 
and political, and the one lesson which in a hundred forms 
he is continually teaching the people. Whether he was 
right, whether this is indeed the one thing ' which makes 
a nation happy and keeps it so,' the reader must decide 
for himself : I will only point out that to us, judging after 
the event, the good sense and sound practical statesman- 
ship of Isaiah's policy, and the folly of that of Shebna 
and the public opinion which supported his government, 
are alike obvious. It was no doubt an admirable policy 
for the interests of Egypt that Palestine, with its mountain- 
defiles and strong fortresses, should consent to be her 
northern military frontier, and that Hebrew blood and 
treasure should be expended in maintaining the fortified 
cities of Samaria and J erusalem, Lachish and Libnah, against 
the advance of Assyria. If the invaders overcame these 
obstacles at last, Egypt would meanwhile have gained some 
years of security at no cost to herself, and would be then 
better able to meet a half-exhausted foe ; while, if the 
resistance of the Hebrews was successful, they themselves 
would have been so weakened as to be at the mercy of the 
ally they had been serving too well. In no case could 
Israel be other than a sufferer : if the contest of the great 
belligerents could have been fought out in some other 
country than Palestine there might have been a little 
more plausibility in Shebna' s scheme for a balance of 
power, though even then the day of retribution might have 
been expected at last, from friend, if not from foe : but 
when Palestine itself must inevitably be ' the cockpit ' of 
Asia and Africa, the one thing which sound policy 
indicated was, that it should, if possible, remain neutral. 
There was a moment of Israel's history (Ewald has finely 
remarked), when it seemed possible that David might 
have laid the foundations of an empire like that of 
Rome, as there was that Solomon might have led the 
way to the reign of a philosophy as sovereign as that of 
Greece : but the innate energy, the proper life of the 
nation, rejected these temptations to quit its appointed 

* Belgium, or the Spanish Netherlands, has "been called ' the cockpit of 
Europe.' 



224 



ISRAEL'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 



place in universal history ; and like Rome and Greece, in 
their appointed spheres, and like every other nation worthy 
the name, it went resolutely forward, at whatever sacrifice 
of all its other and conflicting interests. Now, this appointed 
place and course was that of witnessing in its institutions, 
history, and literature, for what Ewald calls ' true religion,' 
but which I prefer to call the fact that men stand in a real 
and actual relation to God, and that God is really and 
actually present with men to uphold that relation at all 
times, and to educate them through it to know him, and 
to show forth his image more and more. If, then, the 
Jews in the time of Isaiah could not seecure the inde- 
pendence and other political interests of their country 
without abandoning their right place in the world, they 
would have been bound in duty and reason to sacrifice 
these, and, as Isaiah taught, to cleave to Jehovah at all 
hazards, and leave the event to him. But, in fact, not 
only was a political neutrality their only sound policy, 
but they really were very likely to have succeeded in 
maintaining it, if it had been based on a national faith 
and practical piety. It does not need a special miracle, a 
suspension of the ordinary laws of the universe, to make 
true religion, with its fruits of virtue and honesty, the best 
policy, whether for a nation or an individual. The very 
case is already provided for in those laws as originally 
laid down. History and biography attest the fact suffi- 
ciently : though they show that the end is constantly 
effected through so many difficulties, or, as St. Paul would 
say, through so much weakness of the flesh, that nothing 
but the reality of the faith within could have supplied the 
necessary courage for enduring till the end. 



CHAPTER XV. 



ISAIAH XXI. — A VISION IN A DREAM OR TRANCE. — BIBLE MEANING OF INSPI- 
RATION. — DIVINATION. — ANCIENT ORACLES. — SPECIAL POWERS OF NATIONS 

AND INDIVIDUALS. ONE GREECE, ONE SHAKSPEARE. — DISCERNMENT OF 

POLITICAL EFFECTS IN THEIR CAUSES LESS POSSIBLE NOW THAN FORMERLY. 

' THE DESERT OF THE SEA.' — THE PROPHET A WATCHMAN. THE TRIBES 

OF ARABIA. — SUBJECTED BY ASSYRIA. 

rPHE school of commentators represented by Professors 
**■ Alexander and Delitzsch find, in that part of Isaiah 
xxi. which relates to Babylon, ' wonderful coincidences 
with history, both sacred and profane, which could not 
be ascribed to Isaiah, or to any contemporary writer, 
without conceding the reality of prophetic inspiration.' 
These coincidences are the mention of the Medes and Per- 
sians, as the conquerors of Babylon ; the night of festivity 
changed into a night of terror, corresponding with the 
statements of Herodotus, Xenophon, and Daniel, that the 
court was revelling when Cyrus took the city ; the vivid 
picture of the equally historical surprise of the revellers by 
the enemy : the asses and camels which Herodotus and 
Xenophon describe as used for riding in the Persian 
armies, while the latter also represents their advancing two 
by two ; and the breaking of all the idols by a nation who, 
Herodotus says, not only thought it unlawful to use images, 
but imputed folly to those who did it. The rationalists 
accept the premises of this argument as unquestionable, 
but draw the conclusion that the prophecy was, in fact, 
written in the time of Cyprus, either after the event, or so 
shortly before it that a politician could have foreseen these 
historical details which they consider to be discoverable 
in the text. I have already pointed out how far these 



226 



ISAIAH XXI INSPIRA TION. 



opponents appear to me to be advocating different sides of 
the same truth, and helping us towards a higher view 
which shall comprehend and reconcile all that is really true 
in both. And I have said all that I have to say on 
the historical and literary facts and arguments of the case. 
But there is one point to which, often as I have adverted 
to it, these words of Dr. Alexander's warn me that I must 
return, if I would sift the whole question of prophecy to 
the bottom. 

The word 'inspiration,' in the passage just quoted 
from this learned commentator, is there lowered to a sense 
which is neither proper to the Bible nor to the Christian 
Church ;* and is used to designate a power of predict- 
ing events, such as the heathen oracles and the mediaeval 
astrologers claimed, and by their contemporaries were 
believed to exercise. It is commonly said that in the latter 
cases there was fraud or delusion, while the Hebrew prophets 
really possessed the gift : and there can be no doubt that 
the Jews generally, and very little doubt that Isaiah and 
the other prophets themselves, would have maintained that 
these were enabled, on particular occasions, to exercise 
such a gift of prediction ; though the wise and religious 
among them, whether people or teachers, would not 
have allowed that it was in this gift that the reality of 
prophetic inspiration consisted. But conscience, no less 
than reason, forbids me to deny that the Greek and 
Roman oracles, and the astrologers of the middle ages, 
did utter numerous predictions which were fulfilled with 
no greater mixture of failures than those of the Hebrews, 
and which were of no less social and political importance 
to those to whom they were addressed. Cicero held that the 
reality of the power of divination was proved alike by the 
universal belief of the greatest sages, and the manifest cor- 
respondence between the predictions and events of the 

* The Prayer-Book (the authoritative manual of a large portion of the 
Christian Church in England) uses the word ' inspiration ' in the true sense, 
in the first Collect of the Communion Service, — ' Cleanse the thoughts of our 
hearts by the inspiration of Thy Holy Spirit ; ' and in the Collect for the 
fifth Sunday after Easter, — ' That by Thy holy inspiration we may think those 
things that be good:' while the fact that such inspiration is the ordinary, 
habitual state of every member of the Church, is asserted or implied in every 
sentence of the Book. 



ORACLES OF THE ANCIENTS. 



227 



oracle of Delphi in particular.* And Niebuhr denies that 
the merely sceptical arguments solve the question :t and 
his observations suggest the thought whether the power 
did exist, not as a miraculous witness of the true faith, but 
as a human endowment of the earlier ages, like the powers 
of language-making and myth-making, which have been 
already noticed. 

The coincidences between the words of the prophecy 
before us, and the events of the taking of Babylon by Cyrus 
are striking ; but I cannot admit that they have the character 
— miraculous or historical — attributed to them. I think 
that they are properly and sufficiently explained by reference 
to the Babylon of Isaiah's own time ; and by the ordinary 
prophetic faculty of so declaring the principles and laws of 
political societies that they were again and again realized — and 
occasionally with curious coincidences of words and events — 
in successive periods. If the reader still thinks that such an 
insight into the future, and such an instinct beyond the 
limits of that insight, as I here claim for Isaiah, are 
beyond any known powers, intellectual or imaginative, of 
the human mind, I would beg him to consider that there 
are many instances in the history of the world of a single 
man appearing with powers unparalleled by those of any 
other ; and in like manner each nation, ancient and modern, 
that deserves the name, had or has a special vocation for 
which it has exhibited powers which no other has shown. 

* See Coleridge's Lay Sermons, p. 91 (3rd edit.) ; and Grote's History of 
Greece, ii. 339. Bacon's Advancement of Learning, ii. (Divination.) And 
compare Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church, i. pp. 467, 468. 

f ' These oracles of the ancients were a strange thing. It is easy to say 
it was all an artifice of the priests ; but these priests themselves were a part 
of the people. Besides, such explanations did well enough for the time of 
the French philosophers as they were called ; but we want deeper inquiries 
at this day. Why is it they were so long respected by the people ? How 
does it happen that we find them in some shape or other, elsewhere ? Did 
man, in those early periods, stand nearer to nature ?' Lieber's Reminiscences 
of Niebuhr, p. 225. The following passage is in the like tone: — 'It seems 
that civilization must have started by some immediate inspiration ; for whence 
comes it, that no tribe, though discovered centuries ago in a savage state, has 
advanced since then, except by some impulse from foreign nations already 
civilized ? The mythology, too, of almost every nation, whose civilization 
dates from remote periods, teaches that a god or goddess descended to instruct 
man in agriculture, the use of iron, and other elementary arts. I hardly can 
conceive how man could have invented by himself the complicated process of 
baking bread, at so early a period as that in which we find him already pro- 
vided with this indispensable article.' — Jbid. p. 227. 

Q 2 



228 ISAIAH XXI. i— io. BABYION. 



There has been but one Homer, one Socrates, one Raphael, 
one Shakspeare ; the greater part even of intellectual and 
educated men live and die without any perceptible trace of 
the gift which enabled Newton to grasp very complicated 
theorems with intuitive apprehension ; and Mozart in 
infancy could compose music with a knowledge of the 
laws of harmony which few grown men could acquire 
by any study. There has been one Greece, from which 
the world derives its philosophy and art ; one Rome, to 
which it owes its laws and politics ; and what would the 
world be now, and to the end of time, if there were no 
England ? And we neither deny these facts, nor call 
them miracles. And before we hurry to a conclusion, 
let us ask ourselves whether the Hebrew nation may not 
have had a vocation of its own, whether Isaiah may not 
have been a great and typical man in that nation, and yet 
neither the one nor the other be the less real or the less 
human for all that. It may be added, that one charac- 
teristic difference between ancient and modern nations is 
that our social relations are far more complicated, — the 
intricate results of so many more causes than were at work 
in the ancient world, and that consequently an intuitive 
discernment of causes and effects was more possible then 
than now : for philosophers tell us that every event could 
be certainly predicted if we knew all the causes that are 
at work to produce it, seeing that like effects always come 
of like causes. 

1 The burden of the desert of the sea.' This enigmatical 
name for Babylon, was no doubt suggested by the actual 
character of the country in which the city stood. It was 
an endless breadth or succession of undulations 1 like the 
sea,' without any cultivation or even any tree : low, level, 
and full of great marshes ; and which used to be over- 
flowed by the Euphrates, till the whole plain became a sea, 
before the river was banked in by Semiramis, as Herodotus 
says.* But the prophet may allude also to the social 
and spiritual desert which Babylon was to the nations 

* Herod, i. 184 ; Grote's Hist, of Greece, ix. 43. Dr. Schrader reads ' king 
of the sea,' as a title or description of Merodaoh-Baladan, king of Babylon, in 
an Inscription of Tiglath-Pileser. — Die Keilinschriften, u. d. A. T., p. 213. 



A VISION IN A DREAM. 



229 



over which its authority extended, and especially to the 
captive Israelite : and perhaps, at the same time, to the 
multitude of the armies which it poured forth like the 
waters of the sea. So Ezekiel tells the Jews that they 
shall be led by God into ' the wilderness of the people,' as 
their fathers were into the wilderness of the land of Egypt ; 
contrasting the human with the natural wilderness — alike 
devoid of true life and order. And St. John, in the 
Apocalypse, adopts the same imagery in describing Baby- 
lon, the dramatic representative of Rome : ' I will show 
thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon 

many waters So he carried me away in the spirit 

into the wilderness And he saith unto me, The 

waters which thou sawest are peoples, and multitudes, and 

nations, and tongues After these things I saw 

another angel, and he cried mightily with a strong voice, 
saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen.' 

This prophecy has more the character of a vision than 
any other in the book, excepting that in the sixth chapter. 
It seems to indicate that the writer had been in a state of 
trance, perhaps somewhat like that which Coleridge de- 
scribes in the introduction to his ' Kubla Khan, or a 
Vision in a Dream,' where he says he ' continued for 
about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the ex- 
ternal senses, during which time he has the most vivid 
confidence that he could not have composed less than from 
two to three hundred lines ; if that, indeed, can be called 
composition in which all the images rose up before him as 
things, with a parallel production of the correspondent ex- 
pressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort: 
on awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recol- 
lection of the whole, and taking his pen, paper, and ink, 
instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines,' — which he 
there gives, but of which the current was abruptly cut off. 
We may get some light too from our ordinary experience 
in dreams here, as on chapter vi. 

The unity of the whole is not less striking than the 
vividness of its parts ; but it is a unity derived from the 
imagination, and not from the logical faculty ; and it over- 
leaps the bonds of time and space, and brings remote 



230 THE POLITICAL WATCHMAN: 

objects together, just as the imagination of the dreamer 
does, without any sense of incongruity. 

' It cometh : ' — a man in a dream would not ask what ; 
— he simply feels that something terrible, and from a ter- 
rible land, is sweeping over the scene, like one of the 
whirlwinds which still, as then, drive furiously up from the 
southern deserts.* Then he sees that there is reason 
enough for this terror, for the land — his own land — is 
filled with spoilers, robbing by fraud or violence : just 
what, in fact, Isaiah and his countrymen experienced as 
the condition of their daily existence during many years of 
his life. 

He recognizes at once the ' terrible land,' ( the desert of 
the sea,' from which the evil has come : he calls Elam and 
Media to ' go up and besiege,' and in a moment all the 
sighing of the oppressed has ceased. 

By a new act of the imagination, he identifies himself 
with the besieged city ; and experiences all the sensations 
of extreme terror, as he sees, in an instant of time, the 
preparations for a feast, and the setting the watch, the 
actual feasting, and the call to arms without and within 
the walls ; and knows at once, as an inhabitant of the city, 
what his doom is. 

Then he half returns to the consciousness that he is 
Isaiah, a prophet in Jerusalem, and no Babylonian, and 
explains how this catastrophe had been revealed to him. 
He is still overmastered by his imagination, but it takes a 
new direction. He was accustomed to wait whole days and 
nights in fasting, meditation, and prayer, when seeking to 
know the mind of J ehovah ; and these special acts were 
but the outward and occasional expressions of a life of 
spiritual waiting and watching, — of patient meditation 
upon God's word and works, and no less patient waiting to 
see the political events of his own day, however dark and 
unpromising, open out into results according with that 
word and those works in the old times. The politics of 
his nation were involved in all the prophet's hopes and 
prayers ; and as the watchman looks from the watch-tower 

* See Layard's account of the ' shergip, or burning winds from the south ; 
Nineveh and Babylon, p. 364, where he quotes this verse of Isaiah. 



WHAT HE SEES. 



231 



in time of war, so he stood on the watch-tower of divinely 
illuminated reason, and looked out into the world, — taking 
a comprehensive view of all that was passing or coming 
there ; discerning the significance and importance of each 
event ; and accordingly either warning the nation, for 
whom he kept guard, of approaching evil, or comforting 
them with the announcement of deliverance.* And thus 
his prophetic office and faculty now represent themselves 
to him, and he describes them, as his setting a watchman, 
by command of J ehovah, to watch and report what he sees. 
This watchman — no other than the projected form of the 
prophet himself — stands on an ideal watch-tower, and sees 
a host of chariots, horses, asses, camels, approaching ; and, 
after listening for a moment with the eagerness of a watch- 
ful sentry, he gives the alarm in the phrase familiar to the 
Hebrew shepherd — ' A lion ! ' And he then reports in 
detail that he had watched continually night and day for 
many days, when at last he saw the invading army, which 
the prophet, in the co-instantaneousness of all the parts of 
a vision, was already become aware of, before he — the 
other self — could report it. ' Lord ' is the title appro- 
priated to God, and not equivalent to ' Sir ' as the 
Authorized Version implies ; — which heightens, without 
at all confusing, the visionary character of the whole, by 
making the prophet recognize his own individuality, and 
the fact that he himself is the watchman, and set there by 
Jehovah. The watchman speaks again after an interval, 
and reports that all is over, — Babylon and her gods are 
fallen. The watchman may be conceived as at first standing 
on the walls of Babylon, and then transferred in a moment 
of time to J erusalem ; but it is simpler to leave the ideal 
indefmiteness of the text. 

The prophet utters a half ironical, half compassionate 
exclamation, on the fate of his country's enemy ; and con- 
cludes by declaring, both to that enemy and to his own 
countrymen, that what he has thus declared he has heard 
from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. 

There are different opinions as to the true rendering of 

* Compare Isaiah lii. 8; lvi. 10; Jeremiah vi. 17; Ezekiel xxxiii. 2; 
Habak. ii. 1. 



232 ISAIAH XXL u— 17. THE ARAB TRIBES: 



details. Some suppose verses 1 and 2 to describe the 
sufferings of Babylon on the invasion of the Medes and 
Persians ; some say it is more correct to read, in verses 7 
and 8, ' And should he see ... let him hearken ; ' some 
understand, ' he cried like a lion for loudness ; ' and some 
refer the c threshing ' to Israel. On the last two render- 
ings I would notice that I have followed Jeremiah's ap- 
parent mode of understanding them,* which also seems to 
me the more graphic. 

The genuineness of the rest of the chapter is not dis- 
puted ; but modern criticism has not decided whether the 
two ' Burdens ' of ' Dumah ' and ' Arabia ' are separate 
prophecies, or parts of one prophecy, in the margin of 
which the two titles would then stand : nor whether 
Dumah is the Arab tribe of Dumah (descended from 
Ishmael,t and having perhaps given its name to the 
Dumah Eljandel still found on the confines of Arabia and 
Syria), or an enigmatical name for Edom,+ as the Sep- 
tuagint supposes, and as the mention of Seir just after 
seems to indicate, though the latter may be taken as re- 
ferring only to the tract of desert and mountain in that 
quarter. To which we, who accept the prophecy against 
Babylon as also written by Isaiah, have to add the question 
whether both, or the former of these, should be taken as 
its continuation. And, lastly, what is the purport of these 
seven verses ? 

The image of the watchman suggests a connection be- 
tween the first and second portions ; and the names Dumah, 
Seir, Arabia, Dedanim, Tema, and Kedar, between the 
second and third. And indeed there seems to me a re- 
markable unity of thought and imagery indicating that the 
whole is one prophecy. If we take the text as it stands, 
the general sense will apparently be, that at the time 
when Judah was actually suffering the oppressions of the 

* Chapter 1. 44 ; li. 33. With the latter compare Micah iv. 12, 13. 
f Genesis xxv. 14 ; 1 Chron. i. 30. 

X 1 Dumah is deep and utter silence, and therefore the land of the dead 
(Ps. xciv. 17; cxv. 17). The name D*nS is turned into an emblem of the future 
state of Edom by the removal of the a sound from the beginning of the word 
to the end.' Delitzsch, Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah, English trans- 
lation, vol. i. p. 334. 



THEY INQUIRE OF THE PROPHET. 



( treacherous dealer,' and the ' spoiler/ but was promised 
deliverance by Isaiah, he is applied to by the Arab tribes, 
whose caravans conducted through Arabia the course of a 
commerce which even then might exchange the tin of 
Britain with the ivory of India : they inquire whether 
they may hope to escape the great robber ; and the prophet 
replies, after a hesitation which seems half contemptuous, 
half indicative of the obscurity in which the future was 
involved to him, that they will not escape. Gesenius 
observes that, though the voice calling to the watchman 
out of Seir may without improbability be taken merely as 
a poetic image, it is also quite probable that it refers to an 
actual inquiry. It was not less likely that the neighbour- 
ing nations should consult a prophet of Jehovah, than that 
Balak should apply to Balaam, Ahaziah consult Baal-zebub 
the god of Ekron, or Croesus the oracle of Delphi. 

The tribes who traversed, as they still traverse, the 
deserts of Arabia and Syria, with their flocks and herds, 
with trade-caravans, or on plundering forays, are chiefly 
traced, in the records of Genesis, to Abraham, through 
Hagar and Keturah, — Nebaioth, Dedan, and Tema as sons 
of Ishmael, and Kedar as the grandson of Keturah ; but 
some also to Joktan and to Cush. We find these Arabs 
— Midianites, Amalekites, and children of the east — in- 
vading Israel, in the time of the Judges ; paying tribute 
to Jehoshaphat and Uzziah ; and having one of their set- 
tlements taken possession of by the Simeonites in the 
reign of Hezekiah, after they had exterminated the tribe, — 
an event which may possibly be connected with the present 
prophecy.* Dedan and Tema are elsewheret connected 
with each other, and with Edom and other northern tribes 
of Arabia : Tema is mentioned by Ptolemy ; and Kedar by 
Pliny, by Stephanus of Byzantium, and by Theodoret, who 
says that in his time the Kedranites pastured their flocks in 
the province of Babylon : and Bochart traces to Dedan, the 
traders in the ivory and ebony of India, the name of 
Daden, an island in the Persian Gulf ; while Seetzen found 
Tema in the caravan-route between Mecca and Damascus. 

* Judges vi. 3 ; 2 Chron. xvii. 11 ; xxvi. 7 ; 1 Chron. iv. 39, 43. 
f Jeremiah xxv. 23; xlix. 7—8; Ezek. xxv. 13. 



234- 



SUBJECTS OF SENNACHERIB. 



In Genesis xxxvii., and Job vi. 19, we have the caravans 
mentioned, and in Ezekiel xxvii., an ample account of the 
trade which they carried on ; while Kedar, known by its 
tents of black hair-cloth, and rich in the flocks which 
formed its staple commerce, seems to have been dis- 
tinguished from these purely trading tribes, by greater 
estrangement from civilized intercourse and courtesy, as 
might have been expected from their different habits.* 
Sir Henry Rawlinson finds the names of Tehaman (Teman), 
Damun, Kidar (Kedar), Khagarin (Hagarenes), and Na- 
baut (Nebaioth), in a list of ' the Aramaean tribes who 
lined the Tigris and Euphrates,' subjugated by Sennacherib, 
and from whom he carried off ' an enormous booty ' of 
men, women, and cattle, of which the kinds and numbers 
are specified : and among the countries whose kings 
brought ' their accustomed tribute ' to Sennacherib, he 
reads that of Huduma, or Edom.t 

* Song of Solomon i. 5 ; Isaiah xlii. 11 ; lx. 7 ; Ezek. xxvii. 21 : Psalm 
cxx. 5 ; Jeremiah ii. 10. 

f Outline, pp. 19, 22. Compare Oppert, Inscriptions des Sargonides, pp. 42, 
44, where the same names are found. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



ISAIAH XXII. — POLITICAL PARTIES AT JERUSALEM. — SHEBNA AND THE MAJORITY. 
— ELIAKIM AND THE MINORITY. — ISAIAH'S ATTACK. ON SHEBNA. — PRE- 
PARATIONS FOR THE SIEGE. — TOPOGRAPHY OF JERUSALEM. SITE OF ZION. 

— SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE AND KING. — FALL OF SHEBNA. — SUFFERINGS OF 

MODERN NATIONS FROM INVASION. — MORAL AND RELIGIOUS RESULTS. 

PRUSSIA. — SWITZERLAND. 

TO an ordinary Englishman, accustomed all his life to 
hear denunciations of the policy of the government 
followed by anticipations of the downfall of its author, and 
of the benefits which the country must expect from the 
new policy of his successor in the ministry, it may seem 
superfluous to examine seriously the notion that the 
twenty-second chapter of Isaiah consists of two separate 
prophecies, or that its unity needs proving by such argu- 
ments as he will find in the commentators. 

The date of the prophecy is evidently that of the four- 
teenth year* of Hezekiah's reign, and of the third cam- 

* This date, and the Hebrew chronology of this period must of course be 
changed, if the ' Assyrian Canon ' should be established. If it is made 
certain that this long list of names has been accurately read and understood, 
and if it supplies a chronology which solves all difficulties without substi- 
tuting new ones, the Hebrew dates must be set aside. But while the question 
is only one of general probability, and such it seems to me to be as 
yet, I must think that the authority of contemporary documents, or 
extracts of documents, of a nation having at the time the political and 
literary culture exhibited in the writings of the Hebrew prophets and 
historians, is to be preferred to that of a list of names put together many 
years after the dates they are supposed to mark, and by a nation with the 
history and culture indicated by the Inscriptions of Sargon, Sennacherib, 
and Esarhaddon. 

Professor Eawlinson thus describes the Canon : — ' The Assyrian Canon 
(discovered by Sir Henry Rawlinson, among the antiquities in the British 
Museum, and published by him in the Athenceum, Nos. 1812, and 2064), an 
account of Assyrian chronology from about b.c 909 to b.c 680, impressed 
on a number of clay tablets in the reign of Sardanapalus the son of Esar- 
haddon, all now more or less broken, but supplying each other's deficiencies 
and yielding by careful comparison a complete chronological scheme covering 



236 ISAIAH XXII. ' THE VALLEY OF VISION: 



paign of Sennacherib ; and, more precisely, during the 
time that the Assyrian armies were overrunning Judaea, 
but before they had appeared under the walls of J erusalem. 
And a comparison of the accounts in the Assyrian Inscrip- 
tions and the books of Kings and Chronicles with the 
discourse before us, enables us, at the end of twenty-five 
centuries, to see the very form and pressure of those ancient 
times. There is indeed a difficulty from that peculiarity of 
Hebrew grammar noticed before, which permits an inter- 
change of the past and future tenses of the verb in such a 
way as to make it a matter of discussion with translators 
which of the two, or whether the present tense instead of 
either, will best express the force of the original. The verbs 
in the description of the preparation for the siege with all 
its circumstances, are translated by Gesenius and others as 
presents, — they understanding them to describe the facts 
as Isaiah sees them in his mind's eye, and just before their 
actual occurrence. No doubt this is the true view in the 
main, and we may be well content with it, if the slight 
haze which it leaves over certain details of the picture 
cannot be dispelled by any modern insight : but it is 
obvious that there is a haze. The alarm of the city and 
its reckless jollity, the repairs of the fortifications and the 
array of the enemy in the neighbouring valleys, imply 
some lapse of time during their course ; and as the whole 
conditions of ancient and Eastern life require us to believe 
that this prophecy was spoken, and not first published in 
writing as it might be now, the question presents itself 
whether any Hebrew scholarship can fix the exact point of 
time at which it was spoken, and so distinguish the facts 
which the prophet saw with his bodily eye from those 
present to him in vision. No such distinction may be 
possible now ; the master-artist himself may have oblite- 
rated any original differences between the actual and the 
ideal objects of his discourse ; but thus much at least we 
may see, — that the actual facts, to which Isaiah could at 
the moment point with his hand, were such as to enable 

a space of 230 years. The chronology of the whole period is verified hy a 
recorded solar eclipse, which is evidently that of June 15, B.C. 763.' — Manual 
of Ancient History, p. 7. 



A SIEGE EXPECTED. 



*37 



his hearers to follow him in filling up the blank portions 
of the canvas. If when he spoke they could see people 
on the housetops looking wistfully in the direction of 
Lachish, before which the Assyrian army was at the 
moment lying, it would seem hardly a figure of speech 
to tell them that the valleys of Hinnom and Rephaim, 
beyond which their eyesight might not carry them, were 
full of Persian cavalry, though in fact they saw nothing 
but green corn waving, nor recognized as yet any sign of 
an enemy along the mile or two of the western highway 
which might be visible from Jerusalem : — for they well 
knew that a very few miles more of that road would take 
them into the heart of Sennacherib's camp. And so 
of the rest. And if the present and the future of that 
day have long become one ideal past to us, the whole 
harmonious picture is not the less true to the life, — true 
to the old Hebrew life which actually was then and there, 
and which is still here for us to see ; and true no less to 
the human life of our own and every other day. 

Let us then look at the picture as it is, after noticing 
its significant and somewhat enigmatical title, analogous to 
that of the previous prophecy against Babylon. It is 
apparently taken — we need not doubt by Isaiah himself — 
from the expression in verse 5, which seems to be itself 
suggested by the fact that it is in vision that the prophet 
sees the trouble and spoiling of the city which to his out- 
ward eye was at the moment showing signs of self-con- 
fidence. Titles stand first, but then, as now, were written 
last, to designate the subject written of ; and this prophecy 
is a vision of the political state and prospects of the city 
which stood in the midst of the valleys of Judah, and of 
the political party and minister who ruled the city at that 
time. Perhaps the thought that this city was the centre 
and source of all prophetic vision, — that 1 out of Zion should 
go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem,' 
at all times and for all peoples, — may have added to 
Isaiah's sense of the propriety of the present title ; but 
the other is more likely to have first suggested it. 

Hezekiah had from the beginning of his reign given 
proof of his faith in Jehovah, as the King whose viceroy 



238 SHEBNA AND THE MAJORITY. 



he was ; but we can see that he had inherited something 
of the weakness of his father's character, along with an 
authority greatly controlled by the nobles, and by what we 
now call a bureaucracy, or government by narrow and 
worldly-minded officials, who, though unable to take any 
far-seeing or comprehensive views of the interests of the 
country, were too firmly seated in power to be dislodged. 
At the head of these was Shebna, of whom it has been 
conjectured, from his father's name never being mentioned 
(as was usual, and as we find done in the case of his fellow- 
ministers'"), and from his being engaged in making a family 
sepulchre, that he was a man of obscure origin ; while his 
name, which does not seem to be Hebrew, and by which 
no one else is called in the Bible, has been supposed to 
indicate that he was a foreigner. Hezekiah, apparently at 
the beginning of his reign, 'rebelled against the king of 
Assyria and served him not ;' t and while — as I have already 
observed — there is no indication that, in so doing, he acted 
by the advice or with the approval of Isaiah, we know from 
Isaiah himself that he opposed an alliance with Egypt in 
support of this revolt, and may infer from his language 
that it was Shebna and his party who promoted it.$ The 
kingdom of Israel had trusted to the like alliance, and was 
annihilated. And now the Assyrian armies were encamped 
in the south-west of Judah, apparently on the road to Egypt 
but expecting and expected to swallow up the little J ewish 
kingdom easily by the way ; its fortified cities had already 
fallen, one after another ; ' and Hezekiah king of Judah sent 
to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended ; 
return from me ; that which thou puttest on me I will bear. 
And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king 
of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty 
talents of gold.' And this tribute Hezekiah sent to him, 
stripping his palace and the temple of the treasures and 
ornaments with which, during the previous years of his 
reign, it had been his glory to have made good the like 
act of his father Ahaz.§ Whether out of sheer treachery, |j 

* 2 Kings xviii. 18. f 2 Kings xviii. 7. 

| Isaiah, xxix. 14 ff., xxx. 1 ff., compared with the prophecy before us. 

§ 2 Kings xviii. 14, 15. 

|| Isaiah xxxiii. 1, 7, 8 ; on which passage see my comment. 



SENNACHERIB'S SUMMONS. 



239 



or because he had reason to question the sincerity of 
Hezekiah's submission (for the communications between 
Judah and Egypt may have still continued), Sennacherib 
took the money, and then sent against Jerusalem a detach- 
ment from the main army with which he was himself 
besieging Lachish, an important fortress about thirty-five 
miles south-west of the capital. The Assyrian generals, 
however, found the city prepared against a surprise, and 
the courage of the king and people too high to yield to 
their persuasions or threats ; and the enterprise failed, only 
to be followed by the overthrow of the main army itself. 

Sennacherib's account of these events must be taken 
with considerable qualifications, as I shall show hereafter.* 
After his relation of his re-conquest of Philistia, and his 
battle with the kings of Egypt and Ethiopia, which I have 
already quoted, t he goes on : — 1 But Hezekiah the Jew sub- 
mitted not. There were forty-four great cities, walled towns, 
and little villages without number, against which I fought, 
subduing their pride and opposing their wrath. By the aid 
of fire, slaughter, battles, and siege towers, I carried them, 
I took them : I brought out of them two hundred thou- 
sand one hundred and fifty persons, great and small, male 
and female, horses, asses, mules, camels, sheep and oxen, 
without number, and I took them for booty. As to him, I 
shut him up in Jerusalem (Ursalim) the city of his power, 
like a bird in a cage. I invested and blockaded the sur- 
rounding forts : those who came out through the great gate 
of the city were taken and carried away. I separated 
from his dominion the cities which I had pillaged, and 
gave them to Mitinti king of Ashdod, to Padi king of Ekron, 
and to Ismibil king of Gaza. I diminished his territory. 
I added to the former tributes and to the payment of their 
tithes a new tribute in token of my suzerainty, and I im- 
posed it on them. Then the great fear of my majesty 
terrified this Hezekiah the Jew : the sentinels and the 
garrison which he had assembled for the defence of Jeru- 
salem, the city of his power, he dismissed. So he sub- 
mitted himself to pay tribute — thirty talents of gold and 

* In chapter xx., where the reader will find a summary of the history of 
this time. f Page 195. 



240 



ELIAKIM AND THE MINORITY. 



eight hundred talents of silver, metals, rubies, pearls, great 
diamonds (?), bundles of leather, thrones trimmed with 
leather, skins of sea-calves, sandal-wood, ebony, rich trea- 
sures ; and also sent me his daughters, the women of his 
palace, his slaves, male and female, to Nineveh, the city of 
my sovereignty. He sent his ambassador to present this 
tribute and to make his submission. '* 

When Rab-shakeh and the enemy's force actually 
arrived under the walls the political power had passed 
from the hands of Shebna to Eliakim, as Isaiah had fore- 
told : not, however, by a literal fulfilment of the prophet's 
vehement denunciations ; but by the former minister 
being reduced from the first office of lord high treasurer, 
or lord steward, to that of secretary. f He may have had 
business talents too useful, or his influence may have been 
still too great, to permit that complete dismissal which 
the single-minded prophet, who did not consider it his 
duty to balance and reconcile conflicting interests and 
expediencies, thought, and no doubt rightly, was the moral 
desert of his character and acts. Probably this very attack 
on the minister, which reminds one of the words by which 
Cicero drove out Catiline when too strong to be attacked 
by more material weapons, may have given the last blow 
to Shebna' s power : he had been hitherto supported by 
that selfish and time-serving majority of nobles, priests, 
and people, whom Isaiah (like his contemporaries) is 
always denouncing, and which was too strong for Hezekiah 
and the minority of God-fearing men to overthrow, till 
the present time, when indications that their policy was 
about to bring utter ruin on the state will have made it 
suddenly and universally unpopular. The political power 
of the nobles, the influence of the priesthood and the 
prophets both with kings and people, and the extent to 
which these balanced each other and limited the regal 
authority, are discernible throughout the Hebrew history. 
David was for many years unable to dismiss Joab his com- 
mander-in-chief, though his character and acts were most 
repugnant to him ; ' the sons of Zeruiah were too strong 

* Eawlinson, Outline, p. 23 ; Oppert, Inscriptions, pp. 44 ff. ; Schrader, 
Keilinschriften, pp. 172. f 2 Kings xviii. 18. 



POWER OF THE NOBLES. 



241 



for him ;' and on his death-bed he advised Solomon not 
to lose, through any scruple, an opportunity for breaking 
the bondage, if such were offered him by any new delin- 
quency. Kehoboam's insolence to his nobles cost him the 
greater part of his kingdom. The whole policy, ecclesias- 
tical and civil, of Joash was changed by the influence of 
the nobles on the death of Jehoiada, the high priest. 
Isaiah and his contemporaries* describe the wealth and the 
rapacity, which imply political power, of the aristocracy : 
and in Jeremiah's narrative t we see that Zedekiah might 
well complain that ' the king was not he who could do 
anything against them.' And the independence and 
courage of the prophets, and the manner in which they 
awakened a public opinion in favour of truth, and justice, 
and the fear of J ehovah, in the face of a persecution which 
often ended in their death, is not less noticeable. We 
cannot decide how far Hezekiah might have protected 
Isaiah at this time from direct violence ; but the prophet, 
who not only openly denounced the policy of Shebna and 
the other ' scornful men who ruled this people in Jeru- 
salem,' but traced its origin to their irreligion, selfishness, 
luxury, and oppression of the poor, and declared that God 
was about to bring them to speedy judgment for these 
things, must have been a brave man ; for he would know 
it to be too probable that, if matters came to issue between 
him and his opponents, ' the king was not he who could 
do anything against them.' 

Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, was no doubt already 
designated by Hezekiah and the God-fearing minority as 
the proper successor of Shebna : and Isaiah's prediction 
that he would be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem 
and to the house of Juclah, implies that Shebna' s character 
and acts were of the unpaternal kind which we might infer 
from the previous censure on his pride and luxury, coupled 
with the like censures on his contemporaries : — those 
senators and princes who joined house to house and field 
to field, while they ground the faces of the poor, and 
justified the wicked for reward ; who called evil good, and 

* Amos vi. 1 — 7 ; Micah. iii. 1 — 3. 
f Jeremiah xxxvii. 15 ; xxxviii. 0. 

R 



242 ISAIAH XXII i— 14. STATE OF THE CITY. 



put bitter for sweet, and were prudent in their own sight, 
but regarded not the work of Jehovah, nor considered the 
operation of his hands.* 

This prophecy, then, was delivered just before the fall 
of Shebna, and when the open country of Judah, and 
many of its fortified cities, were in possession of the 
Assyrians, and they daily expected under the walls of 
Jerusalem, which was crowded with fugitives from the 
country round. 

If the latter half of verse 2 is to be taken with the 
former, which speaks of the city as still full of the bustle 
of peaceful life, it may imply that as yet they have seen 
no deaths, but of those who died in their beds : if it is to 
be taken with verse 3, as a part of the picture of impend- 
ing calamity, it may refer to deaths by famine, and by the 
pestilence which attacked the city crowded with fugitives 
from the open country, and of which Hezekiah himself had 
nearly died. Verse 3 describes the captivity of both 
princes and people, in the day in which the enemy would 
break down the walls, and the cries of the inhabitants 
reach to the mountains. Of these calamities there would 
have been some anticipation in the case of the cities of 
Judah already taken by the Assyrians, and the reports of 
which would have been known in Jerusalem. Elam, as I 
have already said, includes the provinces of Media and 
Persia, at this time dependent on Assyria, and supplying 
Sennacherib with their famous bowmen. Kir,t as is now 
generally agreed, is the region between the Caucasus and 
the Caspian, which is marked by the names of the river 
Cyrus and the province Georgia : though it has been sug- 
gested that it may have been that tract of Southern Media 
where Ptolemy mentions Curene and Carina. Yerse 8 
describes the alarm and indignation of Judah when, by the 
taking of her fortresses, and the appearance of an army 
under the walls of her capital, she is, both in the military 
and the moral sense of the word, dismantled. It was the 
grossest insult to tear the veil from the daughter of Zion ; 
but now it was more than an insult, for it revealed to her the 

* See their description at length in Isaiah v. and elsewhere, 
t 2 Kings xvi. 9 ; Amos i. 5. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF JERUSALEM. 



2+3 



presence and the power of her oppressor. Their eyes open 
to their danger, and they look to the arms in the arsenal, 
which took its name from having been built by Solomon 
of timber from Lebanon : they survey the walls of the 
citadel, commonly called the ' city of David,' and select 
houses to be pulled down for materials to repair and 
fortify the walls with : and they secure water for the 
inhabitants, and cut it off from the enemy, by stopping or 
concealing the sources of the springs which they have first 
conducted into reservoirs within the city. 

In order to make these details clearer, let us consider 
the topography of the city. Towards the south-east part of 
that ridge of rugged, limestone, table-land, which, with a 
breadth of from twenty to twenty-five geographical miles, 
forms the back-bone of southern Palestine, there juts out a 
broad and elevated promontory, enclosed on the east, 
south, and south-west by deep ravines ; while on the north 
and north-west it slopes more gently back into the main 
table-land. These ravines are the Yalleys of Kidron and 
Ben-Hinnom, and the promontory is the site of Jerusalem.* 
The promontory itself consists of several lesser hills and 
undulations, of which the original, and even successive, 
levels must have been indefinitely altered by the quarry- 
ings and abrasions, and the accumulations of earth and 
rubbish, of ages ; just as has been the case with the hills 
of Rome, or of London. But they are still more or less 
distinctly marked out, and especially by two main depres- 
sions which, beginning one from the north and the other 
from the north-west of this promontory, unite in a deep 
ravine called the Tyropsean Valley, which then runs south 
to join the Kidron and Ben-Hinnom ravines. Most 
authorities are agreed that the original city of Jebus 
was on some part of the western ridge, while there is 
no question that Ophel was at the south end of the 
eastern, and that of the Temple was to the north of Ophel 
on the same ridge. But it is still discussed whether the 
ancient Zion was on the north of this eastern ridge, or on 
the south-western hill to which all Christian and local tradi- 
tions, from the time of Constantine to the present day, give 

* Robinson's Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 380 ff. 
E 2 



244 



POSITION OF ZION. 



this name. No biblical or local knowledge, however, makes 
it possible to reconcile the latter position with the various 
scriptural notices, and therefore Mr. Fergusson has returned 
to the uniform declaration of the Talmudical writers, that 
Zion was on the north side of the Temple : and has shown 
that by assigning this position to it he can clear up all, or 
almost all, the previously inexplicable difficulties, and give 
us a coherent topography of the Jerusalem of the Old 
(and also of the New) Testament.* And the recent local 
explorations of Captains Wilson and Warren tend to sup- 
port this view in the main, if they have not finally decided 
it to be the true one, and though many details still 
remain obscure and doubtful. Assuming this then to be 
the true, as it is the only intelligible topography, the 
results, as far as we need them to illustrate the narrative 
before us, are as follows : — The city of Jerusalem, pro- 
perly so called, was distinct from the city of Zion, or of 
David. The former was the old city of the Jebusites, and 
its site the western ridge : the latter was a new city which 
David and Solomon built on the north eastern side of the 
ravine, and which, when complete, included the citadel of 
David on the northern brow of Zion, the Temple being to 
the south ; and the castle of Ophel to the south of that 
again. The citadel of David, or ' Strong-hold of Zion,' 
will thus have been in the same quarter in which, in 
successive periods, we find the citadel of the Maccabees and 
of the Eomans, under the names of Acra, Bethzur, and 
Antonia. It is to be supposed that the military con- 
siderations which approved the site in the last cases, 
would have done so in the first ; and it was on the north, 
and not on the south, that the main fortress was required, in 
order to protect the north-western side of the city, which 
was weak from the nature of the ground. Each of these 
cities, of Jerusalem and of Zion, would have its own wall ; 
and their means of communication across the ravine which 
separated them, was apparently by ' the stairs that went 
down from the city of David,' as in after times by a 

* An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem, by James Fergusson, 
F.R.A.S., 1847, and Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, article Jerusalem. See 
too The Bible Atlas, by Sanm-] Clark, M.A., 1868, p. 55. 



THE SUPPLY OF WATER. 



245 



bridge, of which there are still remains. These, then, are 
* the Two Walls,' between which Hezekiah made a ditch or 
aqueduct ; and by a gate between which Zedekiah fled, 
through the ' king's garden,' which was at the south end 
of the ravine. Before Hezekiah' s preparations for the siege, 
the waters of ' the upper water-course' — or more correctly 
' source of the waters' — ' of Gihon' (that is the water-head 
of Kidron) and ' all the fountains without the city,' among 
which was that of Siloah, overflowed into and formed ' the 
brook which ran through the midst of the land,' down its 
natural channel of the Valley of Kidron ; but now they 
were conducted, by extensive engineering operations, for 
which the Jewish nobles helped to provide the great 
number of workmen required, and the fame of which was 
known to later times,* ' straight down to the west side of 
the city of David,' that is, between the ' Two Walls.' 
There they seem to have been collected in a new ' re- 
servoir' (made the easier in a ravine) which thus became 
a substitute for 'the old pool,' which lay without the 
northern Avail ; and then the king stopped, that is, buried 
in such a way as effectually to conceal, the fountains or 
sources themselves. And a farther supply was obtained 
from the spring of Siloah, which, as I have already noticed, 
seems to have been now conducted through the still exist- 
ing subterraneous channel into the same reservoir. This 
' reservoir' would then be the larger of the pools of Siloam 
described by Captain Wilson, and would have received the 
waters of both Gihon and Siloah : the ' old pool' would be 
the existing pool near the so-called Tombs of the Kings, 
and the same as the 'upper pool' of Isaiah vii. 3, xxxvi. 2, 
and 2 Kings xviii. 17, the aqueduct or conduit of which 
has been recently found, t Hezekiah, lastly, seems to 
have built a wall across the northern opening of the 
ravine, where it widens into less defencible ground ; and 

* ' He [Hezekiah] fortified his city, and Drought in water into the midst 
thereof: he digged the hard rock with iron, and made wells for waters.' — 
Ecclus. xlviii. 17. Straho mentions the abundant supply of water among the 
military advantages of Jerusalem ; and Tacitus says that it possessed a peren- 
nial fountain with subterranean channels. The rock of which the east ridge 
consists is honeycombed with cisterns. 

f Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, article Gihon. Recovery of Jerusalem, 
p. 237 tf. Quarterly Statement of Palestine Exploration Fund, April 1872, p. 50. 



246 HEZEKIAH AND HIS PEOPLE. 



which was perhaps rebuilt by Manasseh, and then described 
as ' a wall without the city of David, on the west side of 
Gihon, in the valley.' This was the weakest part of the 
whole ground, as I have before observed ; and the name of 
the ' camp of the Assyrians,' still surviving in the time of 
Josephus, probably indicates that Kab-shakeh posted him- 
self here : a tradition from Nebuchadnezzar's siege would 
have been more likely to give the name of 'Chaldeans;' 
but the fact that Titus encamped on the same spot, shows 
it was the proper place for besiegers in any age. 

In the account which the Book of Chronicles gives of 
these same preparations for standing a siege, it is related 
that Hezekiah ' gathered the people together to him in 
the street of the gate of the city, and spake comfortably 
to them, saying, Be strong and courageous, be not afraid 
nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the mul- 
titude that is with him ; for there be more with us than 
with him ; with him is an arm of flesh, but with us is 
Jehovah our God to help us, and to fight our battles. 
And the people rested themselves upon the words of 
Hezekiah king of Judah.' * This was the right language 
for the king to use ; and the response of the people was 
no doubt as sincere as loyal and enthusiastic : and their 
earnestness was deep enough to carry them through the 
impending crisis. But deeper than that it was not. 
Isaiah was at the very same time declaring that the 
people were looking to the approach of the enemy, and to 
the efficiency of their preparations for defence ; but not to 
Him who had designed and done all this, both bringing 
the Assyrian on them to punish their sins, and protecting 
them from being quite destroyed by him : and though the 
prophet's preaching might seem not only more gloomy, 
but less true than the king's cheerful harangue, yet the 
event — the outward progress of national corruption and 
degeneracy without any real reformation — justified the 
former. He did not forget nor omit to assert, at the 
proper time, that Jehovah had reserved to himself a ' rem- 
nant : ' it was his unceasing aim to confirm and increase 
that remnant by his exhortations and warnings : but he 

* 2 Chron. xxxii. 7, 8. 



ISAIAH XXII. 15 — 25. SHEBNA' S NEW TOMB. 247 



knew that the faith which Jehovah required was not that 
facile enthusiasm which, alternating with panic, swayed for 
the time the assemblies in the ' street of the gate of the 
city.' The vehement hyperbole of these threatenings 
against the people of Jerusalem, and against Shebna, re- 
minds one of the language of Luther or of Burke : and 
when contrasted with the actual events, throws much light 
on the external and accidental characteristics of Hebrew 
prophecy. 

Those critics who, like myself, see no necessity for as- 
suming a literal accomplishment of the threats against 
Shebna, have hitherto been well content to accept as its 
sufficient fulfilment, the change of offices found (as we 
have just noticed) in the Hebrew history of the time : but 
the mention in Sennacherib's Annals, quoted above, of men 
' great and small,' and ' those who came out through the 
great gate of the city,'* being carried to Nineveh suggests 
the curious and interesting question whether, after all, 
there may not have been some correspondence between the 
facts and the rabbinical traditions that Shebna was carried 
off by Sennacherib. One of these traditions says that he 
was seized by Sennacherib when sent on an embassy by 
Hezekiah ; and another that he fled to the Assyrians 
after an unsuccessful conspiracy to deliver the city to 
them. 

It is quite probable that the 'What hast thou here, and 
whom hast thou here,' was actually addressed to Shebna, 
face to face, and within sight of his new sepulchre : and if 
we follow the topographer quoted above, we shall believe 
that the J ewish forum, in which Isaiah was likely enough to 
have delivered the earlier part of this harangue, was in the 
city of Zion, and, therefore, close upon the city burying- 
grounds, which were just without the wall, and the more 
honourable sepulchres in which were actually hewn out in 
the north and east faces of Zion itself. The mention of 
the height of Shebna' s new tomb, is supposed to indicate 
his extreme pretension to pomp and dignity, as the reader 
will see more at large in Lowth's note. The ancients, not 

* Sir Henry Rawlinson reads ' officers of his [Hezekiah' s] palace,' where 
M. Oppert has ' women of his palace.' 



248 ELIAKIM' S ADMINISTRATION. 



excepting the Jews, attached much more importance than 
we do to every thing connected with the burial of the 
dead, because they were so much less able to distinguish 
the human person from the earthly body, or to apprehend 
the substantial reality of the former apart from the latter. 
Our burials symbolize, and express our faith in, immortality 
and a resurrection ; but the Jews shared more or less the 
common feeling of antiquity that there was some real con- 
nection between a man's due obsequies and his state after 
death. Still their faith, though obscure, was in the main 
spiritual and elevating, when held as it was by David, 
Hezekiah, or Job. But the worldly and sense-bound man 
then, as, indeed, he does now, contemplated the costly 
preparations for his burial, and for the preservation of his 
embalmed and entombed body, as the last possible act of 
regard for that sensual existence which he alone cared for. 
It was but the consistent maintenance to the last of his 
sensual creed — ' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
die.' 

The office of Shebna, who was ' over the house,' was 
that which we find held by Jotham when his father king 
Uzziah was incapacitated by disease/* and must have been 
that of the king's first minister. Of this office Shebna 
shall be deprived, and it shall be given — as in fact it was 
given shortly after — to Eliakim, who is recognized by 
Isaiah as the true servant of Jehovah. Some of the com- 
ments on verses 24 and 25 provoke our wonder how any 
one can have read through twenty-two chapters of Isaiah 
and yet be puzzled by the transfer of the image of the nail 
from Eliakim in the former, to Shebna in the latter, verse ; 
or can think that the difficulty is cleared up by taking the 
poetical picture of the honour which would redound to 
Eliakim' s whole family from his just and able administra- 
tion, for a description of excessive nepotism which should 
be at last punished by a fate like his predecessor's. 

Here, as indeed often before, we get much light on 
Isaiah's times and the meaning of his discourses by a com- 
parison with the accounts of like national conditions in 
modern times, and especially those which thoughtful suf- 

* 2 Chron, xsvi. 21. 



EFFECTS OF MODERN WARS. 



249 



ferers and actors during the European war of the last 
generation have given us. Thus Niebuhr* illustrates 
Isaiah (while Isaiah illustrates him by announcing the 
laws which govern the new as well as the old events) in 
his account of ' that dull comfortable existence which was 
described as the golden age of thirty years ago ; ' of 1 the 
aimless striving after something beyond ' which then arose, 
and 1 which, combiued with the universal effeminacy, led 
to the miserable results ' which they all experienced as 
their subsequent condition : — of ' the dissolution of all 
civil bonds and institutions being completed :' of ' nine- 
tenths of the landowners ' (which in Germany includes the 
cultivators) ' both in town and country ruined, yet who 
must still go on paying contributions — it cannot be other- 
wise till they are cut down to the bone while 1 many, 
many thousands of our youths, of our men, are shedding 
their blood, are pining away their lives in hospitals, or in 
want and wretchedness :' — of ' an innocent country ' (Hol- 
stein) ' abandoned to pillage, reduced to misery,' apparently 
to be ' deliberately turned into a desert by an unprincipled 
policy and rapacity,' and its prosperity ' fruitlessly de- 
stroyed, like some unhappy victim, whose fate it has been 
to experience only those sorrows which humiliate and en- 
feeble, and has no opportunity to make those sacrifices, by 
which individuals and nations are purified and exalted :' — 
of ' life dragged along as a weary burden :' — of ' armies 
entrusted to boys, because they are the sons of princes ; 
divisions to generals who have outlived captivity,' — while 
the statesman ' who feels in himself that he could counsel 
and lead, remains in the background, not only because of 
a thousand miserable considerations, but because the hour 
of dissolution is not yet come, in which he would press 
forward :' — of the error of fancying that ' the general 
misfortunes and the approaching danger have produced a 
grave and solemn tone at the Court and seat of govern- 
ment ;' where ' all amusements go on just as usual : people 
look on the war as a subject of conversation, find fault 
with the English, abuse the Russians, comfort themselves 
with saying that the French are not so bad,' &c, &c. and 

* Life and Letters, translated by Miss Winkworth. 



2 5 0 



NIEBUHR'S DESCRIPTION 



' there is an everlasting talk, mostly without the slightest 
comprehension of the matter,' among these courtiers and 
rulers, while men like Niebuhr must ' listen and not speak 
out their whole mind,' however ' their blood may boil 
with indignation :' — of ' the senseless prating of those who 
talked of desperate resolves as of a tragedy :' — of the ' un- 
tiring malice and inexhaustible wickedness ' of the political 
intriguers, ' who have plunged this unhappy country into 
ruin,' while ' all true help is shamefully cast aside the 
utter ' blindness of the king which allowed the progress 
of political disunion ' to proceed to such extremity ; the 
' lasting hindrance to all comprehensive undertakings 
arising from the mediocrity and baseness that can scarcely 
even now be dislodged from their present position of 
power ;' and ' the vanity of the idea that a better day 
must follow the night of incapacity and little-mindedness :' 
— of the ' bitter grief and comfortless affliction ' which 
prompts him ' constantly to ask himself whether we are 
really living in the same age of the world that we did 
formerly, or whether all before us is not, as it seems to 
our eyes, chaos and night, a universal destruction of all 
that now exists.' He feels, too deeply to be inclined to 
say much about it, that ' the dreadful decision of a great 
judgment-day of the world is at hand :' — ' Now must 
begin either universal death and putrefaction, or the 
heavings of a new life : but where are its germs :' — ' this 
is the time when the elect are proved ; he who has en- 
dured to the end, will have a bright evening to his life, 
but for the present, happy . . . are they who have learnt 
in other ways and former times to bear the cross :' — he 
' begins to cherish the encouraging belief that many hearts 
have grown stronger and purer through danger and suf- 
fering, and that on all sides there lives a spirit, though 
straitened and repressed, whose power must increase :' — 
though it is so much ' the most probable that they will 
have to endure the double sorrow of seeing this flame 
which has been secretly growing more intense, extinguished 
by oppression,' that he can only 1 almost believe that if 
God would take pity on them, they might, though with 
bitter grief and pain, attain to something much better 



OF THE STATE OF PRUSSIA. 



2CI 



than their former state,' yet he urges his friend to ' become 
the advocate among others of that which as yet scarcely 
begins to stir in the bosom of night, but of which 
the existence is certain : let them not regard what still 
exists on the surface of things, and is the tottering wreck 
of an age gone by :' — the patriot may see ' the many 
elements of good striving for life, — of a better spirit than 
existed in happier time ;' the Christian may ' trust that a 
Comforter will come, a new Light when he least expects 
it,' and that c all the sorrow of this era will lead on towards 
truth if we are only willing.' And when ' deliverance is 
offered to them by the manifest and wonderful providence 
of God,' who has ' smitten ' the oppressor ' with blind- 
ness ;' there is first the recognition that this deliverance 
has come ' after God has chastened us sufficiently for our 
deep-rooted sins,' and that unless it finds each of us ready 
to devote his life to its attainment, we cannot be saved ;' — 
and then we have the picture of this requisite moral and 
religious acceptation of their salvation, 1 the ground cleared 
and ready to bear fruit,' ' love dwelling in every heart, and 
all ready to welcome whatever was noble and good,' and 
'good will and good ideas ripening universally with good 
deeds :' — and if the ' morality,' ' patience,' ' discipline,' 
' humanity,' which makes us as well as Niebuhr ' feel a 
true reverence ' for ' an army so pure,' were once and for 
the first time, ' during the whole war,' broken down by 
' the great privations they had to suffer ' after the battle of 
Laons, — the young officer who reports it ' could not sleep 
for grief ;' the field-preachers ' took for their text, What 
shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and 
lose his own soul, and exhorted the men to return to the 
patience and honesty they had shown till lately ; the brave 
fellows wept bitterly, and promised with a loud voice to do 
so ; while General York reminded them of the sacredness 
of their vow . . . . that they ought to be as good as they 
were brave .... ordered one man to step forward from 
each company .... and took their hand upon it that 
they would suffer anything rather than be guilty of any 
excesses.' We may make such abatements as we think 
cool judgment demands from the glowing colours of the 



2 5 2 



ZSCHOKKE ON SWITZERLAND. 



patriotic picture ; its value as an illustration of Isaiah will 
not be diminished. 

Zschokke thus moralizes on the French occupation of 
Switzerland : — ' There are times — the Divine Providence 
has so ordained it — there are times when it is needful 
that the iron rod of doom should be stretched forth to 
arouse the nations of the earth from their senseless brood- 
ing over material interests and sensual wants ; and to save 
them from the gradual brutalization into which they are 
frozen by the influence of forms no longer vital ; or from 
the degradation to mere mechanical motion and existence. 
National wanderings, crusades, and civil wars, have ulti- 
mately left behind them greater blessings than those 
which they destroyed. There must be times of death and 
destruction, to make room for new life. The devouring 
selfishness of the powerful would crush the weaker part of 
the human family, and cripple with its impious weapons 
the free wings of the soul, if from time to time the 
thunder-voice of a higher Will than man's did not pro- 
claim, as of old, through the storm-clouds of Sinai, the 
voice of Jehovah ; ' Thou shalt have none other gods 
than me !' Such were the thoughts that chiefly occupied 
me as I travelled with Tscharner towards Aarau.'* 

* Zschokke's Autobiography, English Translation, p. 71. In Tholuck's 
preface to his Commentary on the Romans (if I remember rightly), and in a 
paper of Krummacher's in the Reports of the Evangelical Alliance, there are 
like descriptions of the moral and religious effects of the war of freedom on 
the people and the king of Prussia. 

The above pages were written in 1852. Since then there have been great 
wars in America and Europe full of the like moral significance. 1873. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



ISAIAH XXIII. — THE PHOENICIANS HISTORICAL NOTICES — THEIR TRADE 

CARRIERS OF PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS RELATIONS "WITH ISRAEL. THE 

TYRIAN HERCULES — THEIR RELIGION POLITICAL, NOT NATURAL. — SIEGE OP 
THE ISLAND-TYRE BY SHALMANESER BY NEBUCHADNEZZAR BY ALEX- 
ANDER PRESENT STATE. AUTHORSHIP OP THE PROPHECY. THE 

DISPENSER OF CROWNS. THE QUEEN OF CITIES DISHONOURED. TYRE 

FORGOTTEN SEVENTY YEARS — SHALL SING AS AN HARLOT. 

rPHE fertile and well- watered plain which undulates from 
the foot of Lebanon to the sea, along the north-west 
coast of Palestine, was the land of the people called 
Siclonians by the Hebrews and by Homer, but Phoenicians 
by the later Greeks and the Romans. Sidon (the Fishery) 
was the most ancient of their cities : the Book of Joshua 
calls it ' the great,' while it gives the epithet of ' strong' to 
Tyre, of which the tradition was, that it was founded 240 
years before the building of Solomon's Temple, by fugitives 
from Sidon, then besieged by the king of Ascalon. Suc- 
cessive colonies filled the plain ' with great and fair cities,' 
from Tyre to Aradus, each of which seems to have had its 
own king, or judge, though in the time of David and 
thenceforward we find Tyre, and the king of Tyre, in 
apparent superiority over the whole people. They were 
a Canaanitish race ; and their land — first promised to 
Zebulun — was allotted to Asher,* to whom, however, it 
remained (as Gesenius elsewhere says) an inheritance in 
partibus infidelium ; for in the days of the Judges, the 
Sidonians not only continued to dwell ' careless, quiet, 
and secure,' but became the oppressors of the Israelites, t 
Lebanon supplied timber for the Sidonian ships, near 
Sarepta were iron and copper mines, the sea yielded them 
the shells and the sand with which to make their purple 

* Genesis xlix. 13 ; Josb.ua xix. 28, 29. f Judges xviii. 7; x. 12. 



254 



ISAIAH XXIII. PHOENICIA. 



dye and their glass, and their women wove the variegated 
robes of which Homer speaks : and thus they began that 
trade which in after times exchanged the tin of Britain, 
and the amber of Prussia, with the gold, the apes, the 
ebony, and the ivory of India, and of which Ezekiel has 
so gorgeously described all the details, as well as the 
wealth, luxury, and power of which it was the source.""* , 
By land their trade was conducted to a great extent (as we 
have before seen) by the Arab caravans ; by sea, their own 
ships carried them to Egypt, Greece, Italy, Sicily, Malta, 
Carthage, Spain, and perhajDS even to America ; while the 
navy created by Solomon with the help of their ship- 
wrights and sailors, gave them a water communication 
with Arabia and India, from the port of Elath at the head 
of the north-east gulf of the Bed Sea. 

The creation of this Hebrew navy was one of the fruits 
of the alliance and friendship of David and Solomon with 
Hiram, king of Tyre : he also supplied them with materials 
and artificers for building the Temple, palaces, and other 
public works ; and the rapid growth of the national wealth 
and luxury of Israel from this period, shows that their 
commercial intercourse with Tyre must have been con- 
siderable, t Probably then, as in the times of Ezekiel, 
they supplied the Tyrian markets with wheat, honey, oil, 
and balm ; and we may believe that a considerable part of 
the caravan traffic from Arabia would pass through their 
country, for the sake of the security afforded by a settled 
and civilized government. And thus, while Israel re- 
mained an agricultural country, as the whole scope of its 
constitution and policy required, it enjoyed as large a 
share of the benefits of commerce as was compatible with 
the main historical ends for which the nation existed : — 
or, as Isaiah expresses it in the chapter before us, ' The 
merchandise of Tyre was for them that dwelt before 
Jehovah, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.' 
Nor was Phoenicia's debt to Israel less, or less character- 
istic : when a positive recognition of facts shall have 
superseded alike the opposite theories which — with super- 

* Ezekiel xxvii. 

t 2 Samuel v. 11 ; 1 Kings ix. 10—14, 26—28 ; x. 11—29. 



COMMERCE OF PHCENICIA. 



255 



stitious reverence, or with scoffing sciolism — have con- 
spired to exclude the Hebrew nation from its place in 
universal history, it will be plain that it was not for 
nothing that Phoenicia came in contact with a people 
whose institutions were based on a faith in family life, 
and in laws upheld by a righteous Lord ; and that, at the 
time when Jewish life was embodied by David and Solo- 
mon in the forms in which it would be most easily intel- 
ligible to foreigners, there should have been a Hiram 
capable of appreciating their personal and political cha- 
racter. It was after this that Phoenicia became the carrier 
of the germs and maxims of politics and philosophy to 
Europe : and her people knew their calling too well not 
to get these, like other things, from the best market ; 
though, like traders, they were content to hand them over 
to their customers, keeping little of them for themselves.* 
We notice in Ezekiel's list, ' the persons of men,' 
brought from Javan (or Ionia), to the Tyrian market : 
and Isaiah's contemporaries, Amos and Joel, complain that 
the Tyrians sold Hebrew slaves, ' the sons of Judah and 
Jerusalem,' to the Edomites and the Greeks, notwithstand- 
ing the alliance and friendship which should have subsisted 
between the two nations ; t of which slaves, as well as of 
the ' gold and silver, and precious goodly things' of the 
Israelites, they had possessed themselves by purchase from 
the Assyrian, or other licentious soldiery, who found in 
the Tyrians the shrewd and unprincipled traders who are 
always at hand to buy such plunder. To these complaints 
of the breaches of the ' brotherly covenant' and friendly 
alliance between the two nations, the prophets had in all 
ages to add their resistance to the opposite abuse of that 
friendship, which introduced the worship of the Sidonian 
Astarte and Baal into Israel, and of which Solomon's 
apostasy, and the establishment of the priesthood of Baal 
by Jezebel the wife of Ahab, and daughter of Ethbaal 
king of Tyre, were but instances, though the most 
important ones. 

* See Maurice's Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, \ ' Phoenicians,' 1st and 
2nd editions. 

f Amos i. 9, 10 ; Joel iii. 4—6. 



RELIGION OF PHCENICIA. 



Melicartha, or Hercules — the Phoenician and Greek equi- 
valents, according to an inscription from Malta — was the 
god whose temple Herodotus went to Tyre to see, and 
found with its ' two pillars, one of gold and the other of 
emerald, both shining exceedingly at night/ and its rich 
offerings, which included (as we know from other accounts) 
those of the Phoenician colonies, in all of which the same 
god was worshipped. Melicartha means * king of the city,' 
and even Hercules is by some derived from a Hebrew word 
for ' the Trader ; ' and it is probable that he is the same 
as Baal, which was the general Phoenician name for God. 

Baal is constantly coupled with Astarte ; and the more 
philosophical opinion* is that this national god and god- 
dess were the Lord and Lady of Phoenicia, rather than, the 
sun and moon : — for to a people full of political life the 
sun and moon would have been themselves representatives, 
while a divine king and queen were the realities. And if 
so, the habitual inclination of the Israelites, an essentially 
political people, for this worship becomes the more easily 
understood. A worship of nature — of cats and dogs — 
like that of Egypt, could have had little attraction for 
them ; but this of the Sidonians offered to supply their 
craving for a national and political creed, yet without the 
holiness and righteousness of heart and life, which the 
worship of the Loed of Abraham and of David required 
them to maintain by an habitual sacrifice of their sensual 
and worldly nature. 

Of the colonies or commercial settlements of the Phoeni- 
cians, the prophecy before us mentions tw T o — Tarshish and 
Chittim. Tarshish, or Tartessus, was a city and port 
between the two mouths of the Bcetis, or Guadalquiver, in 
Spain, and the oldest of the Tyrian factories : and in this 
name, according to Gesenius, the later Phoenician settle- 
ments of Gades and Carthage w T ere afterwards included, 
both by the Hebrew and the classical writers. Chittim, 
as the same authority shows, is Cyprus, in the south of 
which island was the Phoenician settlement of Citium, in 
the ruins of which, still called Chiti, Pococke found Phoeni- 
cian inscriptions ; — but, as in the case of Tarshish, the 

* Maurice's Moral and Iletaphfsical Philosophy, u. s. 



TYRE IN ISAIAH'S TIME. 



257 



name was extended, and in later times includes the other 
islands and coasts of the Mediterranean. 

Sidon (for a full topography and history of which, as 
well as of Tyre, I may refer the reader to Dr. Robinson's 
Biblical Researches in Palestine) is still a city of five or 
six thousand inhabitants, in the midst of well-watered 
gardens and orchards — ' the flowery Sidon dwelling by the 
streams of the graceful Bostrenus '* — with some trade in 
silk, cotton, and nutgalls. Of 1 Old Tyre,' the site is un- 
certain, as there are no remains to mark it : the Island- 
Tyre — where, in later times at least, was the chief city — 
seems to have been originally a ledge of rocks, which the 
gathering sand formed into a narrow island less than a 
mile long, and not half a mile from the main land : 
according to Josephus, it was already occupied by the 
Tyrians in the time of Hiram, the friend of Solomon. In 
the reign of Elulseus king of Tyre (who reigned thirty-six 
years, and was contemporary with Hezekiah) Cyprus re- 
belled ; and at that time the king of Assyria, who is said 
to have been called in by the city of Gath to protect it 
against Elulseus, invaded Phoenicia ; and on the submission 
of Sidon, Acre, Old Tyre, and other towns, he obtained 
from them a fleet with which to attack the Island-Tyre. 
But the Tyrians made peace with Cyprus, defeated the 
Assyrians at sea, and successfully withstood a blockade of 
five years, in which, however, they suffered much from the 
cutting off of the aqueducts — of which the traveller stilL 
finds, if not the remains, which may be all later, yet the 
large and fine rushing streams, at the village named 1 Well- 
head.'! I have noticed before that Sargon claims to have 
taken Tyre (I suppose Old Tyre), and that a monument of 
the same king has been found in Cyprus, and is now in 
the Berlin museum. And Sennacherib, at the beginning 
of his third campaign, of which I have already quoted 
some of the later events, proceeded to Phoenicia when 
Luliya (Elulseus), ' king of Sidon,' fled at his approach, and 
he replaced him by Ithobal, on whom he imposed the 

* Dionysius Periegetes, 0. T. D. 905, quoted by Kobinson. 

t Josephus, Ant. ix. 14, 2. Josephus quotes from Menander's Greek 
translation of the Tyrian Archives ; and he adds that the Assyrian king was 
Salmanasar. -* 

S 



TYRE IN LATER TIMES. 



usual tribute, after the whole country, including Tyre, had 
been reduced to submission. There the kings of the west 
— among whom he names Mittinti of Ashdod, Puduil of 
Amnon, Kamosnadab of Moab, and Melikram of Edom — 
repaired to his presence, and brought him their accustomed 
tribute, and kissed his feet.* Asurhaddon gives the king 
of Tyre in a long list of his tributaries, among whom 
appears the name of Manasseh of Judah. Under Ithobal II. 
Tyre was again besieged for thirteen years by Nebuchad- 
nezzar, and the fortress apparently again proved impreg- 
nable^ though the nation seems nevertheless to have fallen 
under the Babylonian, as afterwards under the Persian, yoke : 
and ' they of Tyre and Sidon' brought cedar from Lebanon 
to the port of Joppa, for rebuilding the Temple at Jeru- 
salem, in obedience to the grant of Cyrus. + A third siege 
of Tyre by Alexander the Great (about 332 B.C.), ended 
with the reduction of the Island-Tyre, after seven months 
of desperate struggle on both sides, during which Alexander 
built a mound or causeway from the mainland to the island. 
To supply materials for this, and the other works of the be- 
siegers, Old Tyre was razed, never to be rebuilt ; but ' the 
fortress of the sea,' and its trade, recovered both from this 
blow, and from that which the same conqueror gave them 
by building Alexandria. After Alexander's death it fell 
to the Seleucidse, many of whose Tyrian coins, with Greek 
and Phoenician inscriptions, are extant. In the time of 
Strabo, and under the Roman dominion, it was rich and 
flourishing, with its commerce and purple-dyeing trade; 
with two harbours (formed by Alexander's mole which 
had made the island a peninsula), of which however only 
one, called the Egyptian, was open ; and with remarkably 
lofty houses, such as could not be seen in Rome itself. 
Tyre became Christian early, § and in the days of Jerome 
was still ' a very fair and noble city,' and traded ' with 
almost all the world.' It was an archbishopric under the 

* Rawlinson, Outline, pp. 20, 23 ; Oppert, Inscriptions, pp. 43, 44 ; Schra- 
der, Keilinschriften, p. 174. Then follows the passage I have already quoted 
above, p. 194. 

f I certainly think with Gesenius, that this is the fair conclusion to draw 
from Ezekiel xxix. 18, 19, as well as from Jerome's admission that no Greek 
or Phoenician history mentioned the capture. 

% Ezra iii. 7." § Acts xxi. 4. 



DATE OF THE PROPHECY. 



259 



patriarchate of Jerusalem, with fourteen bishoprics under 
it. Taken by the Saracens in 639 ; recovered by the 
Christians in 1124 ; in 1280, conquered by the Mame- 
lukes ; and taken from them by the Turks, in 1516; it 
then sank into a decay which corresponded literally with 
Ezekiel's denunciations, when, at the end of the seven- 
teenth century, Maundrell found not one entire house, but 
only a few fishermen harbouring themselves in the vaults. 
Since then it has somewhat rallied, and Dr. Robinson 
found it a town of about 3,000 inhabitants, with some 
poor trade in tobacco, cotton, and wood. Alexander's 
causeway has become a sand-bank half a mile wide ; the 
ruins of the large cathedral are filled with mean hovels ; 
and if anything remains of the Tyre of Isaiah, it is the 
columns of red and gray granite which strew the ragged 
western shore of the rock, ' from one end to the other, 
along the edge of the water and in the water.' 

The discussions as to the genuineness of this prophecy 
again test the value of the argument from style and diction. 
Some critics of the new school are in favour of the old 
orthodox explanation of the prophecy as a prediction of 
the taking of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, ascribe it to a 
contemporary writer, and find clear indications of the late 
date in the style. Others, as Gesenius, Knobel, and Cheyne, 
connect the prophecy — as Grotius did — with the siege by 
Shalmaneser, and see nothing in the style to prevent their 
attributing it to Isaiah. And Ewald infers from the style 
that it may be the production of a younger contemporary 
and disciple of Isaiah. 

There is, in truth, no stronger evidence that Tyre was 
taken in the days of Nebuchadnezzar than in those of 
Isaiah. But I persuade myself that the reader agrees that 
we are not to adopt an a-priori theory, as to the nature of 
prophecy and its fulfilment, and cut our facts to fit it ; but 
that we are to let the facts tell their own story, and be 
sure that whatever we can read of this will be the 
truth, all commentators and critics notwithstanding. And 
if we have, on the one hand, found the book so replete 
with political, social, and personal wisdom as to throw a 
clear light not only on the history of Isaiah's own time but 

s 2 



2 6o INSPIRATION AND REVEIATION. 



on that of all other times and nations including our own — 
so that when we read of Babylon or Jerusalem, of Ahaz or 
Sennacherib, we perceive ourselves studying the universal 
propositions of a science by the help of a diagram : 
yet, on the other hand, we have found, mixed up with 
minute and interesting correspondences between details 
in the prophecies and in history, discrepancies and non- 
fulfilments of predictions at least as marked. Thus, in 
the last prophecy — the denunciation of Shebna and the 
worldly men of Jerusalem — Isaiah predicts that the city 
shall be taken by assault,'" and both princes and people 
carried into captivity ; and that in particular this shall be 
the fate of Shebna, in order to make way for his successor 
Eliakim : and if the accuracy of the reading of the 
Assyrian Inscription (quoted in the last chapter) is finally 
established, and we then claim a right to apply its terms 
to the fulfilment of the prediction as to Shebna and the 
nobles, it remains certain that, instead of the city being 
taken, Isaiah himself soon after promised, with a confidence 
which the event justified, that the Assyrian should not 
even attempt the siege.t In like manner Isaiah had pre- 
dicted the approach of the invaders from the north, when 
they should appear under the walls of Jerusalem, J whereas, 
as far as we know, they only came from the south-west ; 
though the other part of the prophecy, that they should then 
be cut off with a terrible crash, was fulfilled with striking 
accuracy. So the details as to the fate of Babylon, — the 
city taken during a feast by the Medes, cruel, regardless of 
gold, and riding two and two, with a cavalry of asses and 
camels as well as horses ; and the Arab in our own day, 
still fearing the satyrs if he pitches his tent in its ruins for 
a single night, — appear by the side of the threat that ' her 
time was near to come,' and the fact that centuries inter- 
vened before its accomplishment even began. 

What then ? If we cannot prove that Isaiah was in- 
spired, by showing that he could predict future events more 
infallibly than the ancient oracles, or the mediaeval or 
modern astrologers or mesmerists, was he not inspired ? 

* Isaiah xxii. 3 — 5. f Isaiah x. 28 — 34, 

% Isaiah xxxvii. 33 — 35. 



ISAIAH XXIII i— 13. THE FAIL OF TYRE. 261 



and are his writings not a part of God's Revelation ? Let 
the reader turn to the book itself ; and though he may not 
find these infallible predictions — which he may be sure he 
would have found, if they had been essential to God's 
communication of himself to man — yet he will find, re- 
flected in each page . ' the light of that Holy Spirit, which 
in all ages has taught, and now teaches, the hearts of his 
faithful people, and so grants them to have a right judg- 
ment in all things, and to rejoice evermore in his holy 
comfort ;' * and he will find that, as the same light in his 
own heart brings him into sympathy and intelligence with 
the meaning of what is recorded in those pages, they do 
reveal to him something of God's character and mind, and 
of his designs and dealings with man, which neither he, nor 
any one else, has known, except by their means. If the 
miraculous prediction were there, it would be but the sign : 
but we have the Inspiration and the Revelation themselves, 
superseding all signs. 

If, then, we take the prophecy before us to be of the 
same kind as those which have preceded it, our historical 
remains are quite sufficient to bring Tyre into contemporary 
connection with Isaiah, and quite sufficient to preserve 
that connection onward through successive ages, without 
our demanding any proof that either Shalmaneser, or 
Nebuchadnezzar, did, or did not, take the city, and without 
being anxious for the confirmation of the reading of Sen- 
nacherib's account of his campaign, much as it is to the 
purpose. 

Isaiah sees the city and country of Tyre in the power of 
the enemy, and tells the fleets home-bound from the 
western colonies, that they will learn, when they are off 
Cyprus, that their own harbours and hearths are desolate. 
The inhabitants of the Island-Rock are silenced, by the 
ruin of its merchants who made Egypt its never- failing 
granary — barren rock as it was — by making it a mart of 
nations. * The Black' (Sihor) was the Greek and Latin, as 
well as the Hebrew, name for the Nile, with its fertilizing 
black mud ; and we notice Isaiah's wonted poetic taste in 
minute points, in calling the Egyptian harvest ' the harvest 

* Collect for Whitsunday. 



262 



TYRE'S MERCHANT PRINCES. 



of the river/ and not of the earth. His next image is bold 
and grand ; he calls the nation of sailors whose dwellings 
were their ships, and their chief city an island, ' the sea ; ' 
explaining (lest it should be too bold) that he means the 
' stronghold of the sea.' It is doubted whether verse 5 
means that when the tidings reach Egypt, the Egyptians 
will be grieved at the ruin of their great market, and 
terrified at the prospect of the advance of the Assyrians 
against themselves, after this, their northern ally, has fallen ; 
or, that the alarm in Phoenicia, or among the nations 
generally, will be as great as when on some former occasion 
— whether the fall of No-Ammon lately, or even the destruc- 
tion of Pharaoh at the Ked Sea — the like news was heard 
of Egypt, famous to the world, and of which the prosperity 
was so important to the Tyrian commerce. Some modern 
commentators translate the last clause of verse 7 ' whose 
feet were ever carrying her far off to sojourn,' — under- 
standing it to refer to the trading and colonizing habits of 
the Tyrians ; but there is equal authority for retaining the 
Authorized Version, of which the meaning is that the 
inhabitants of the ancient and joyous city shall be carried 
into captivity. 

Herodotus and Strabo speak of kings in the smaller 
Phoenician cities, as well as in the colonies of Tartessus, 
Citium, and Carthage ; and we need not go from England 
to Genoa or Venice, with their doges and senates, their 
Kings of Corsica and Greek dependencies, for examples of 
a nation of merchants who were princes and dispensers of 
crowns : — we need only look at the ' Company of Merchants 
trading to the East Indies,' extending their rule over a 
great continent, and there setting up and pulling down 
kings and emperors at their will. Tyre (like other nations) 
was noted for the severity with which she ruled her de- 
])endencies ; but now their bonds are loosed, and the 
prophet tells Tarshish, which, with its natives working as 
slaves in the Spanish silver mines, may have been the 
hardest treated of all, that she is free as the Nile, the 
river that least regards any bounds, to wander at her own 
sweet will.* And the proud queen of cities herself, she 

* ' The river wandering at its own sweet will.' — Wordsworth. 



ISAIAH XXIII. 14—18. TYRE FORGOTTEN. 263 



who so long sat in glory, rejoicing in her wealth and 
power, and in that antiquity of which the Phoenicians were 
so proud, shall fly, a dishonoured woman, and on foot, for 
refuge to her colonies — to Tarshish or to Chittim — but 
even there shall find no rest. For the enemy may pursue 
her, and the colony may retaliate for its past wrongs, of 
which, in fact, we see an instance at the date of this pro- 
phecy, when Cyprus and the cities of Phoenicia assisted 
Shalmaneser in the siege of Tyre, as has been mentioned 
above. 

The word translated 'merchant ' in verses 8 and 11, is 
' Canaan ' in the Hebrew ; which Gesenius illustrates by 
the like use of Chaldean for Astrologer, and of Jew, Swiss, 
Savoyard, and Italian, to indicate various modern callings : 
at the same time he observes that it is not unlikely that 
the name Canaan may, according to its etymology, mean 
the land, or people, of traders. 

It is the Lord of hosts, whose counsels bring this ruin 
upon Tyre ; and his instruments are the Chaldeans, at 
this time vassals and auxiliaries of the Assyrians. The 
Chaldeans may, or may not have been specially employed 
by Shalmaneser or Sennacherib in the siege of Tyre ; they 
no doubt served in his armies, as the tribes of Elam and 
Media did. This mention of the Chaldeans is analogous 
to that of Elam and Kir in the last chapter ; and there is no 
more necessity in the one case, than in the other, for sup- 
posing that the prophet's phraseology must, if taken with- 
out prejudice, indicate the nation chiefly interested in the 
war, and not a dependent people who were serving as auxili- 
aries. The vexed question whether the translation of this 
verse which I have followed is the true one, I can throw 
no new light upon. The student will find it fully discussed 
by Cheyne, Delitzsch, Knobel, and Gesenius, and will judge 
for himself of the value of Ewald's conjectural emendation 
of for D^to. 

Tyre shall be forgotten * seventy years, like the days of 
one king;' — a Hebrew idiom, obscure to us, though pro- 
bably plain enough to Isaiah's hearers ; but of which the 
most probable sense is, that the round number here, as 
elsewhere, indicates an indefinite, though considerable 



264 TYRE SHALL BE RESTORED. 



time, and that the prophet either farther limits this by a 
phrase equivalent to ' for about a whole generation,' or 
else implies that the seventy years — the long time of 
oblivion — shall be as monotonous, and perhaps as short 
to look back upon, as those of a single reign. ' The days 
of a king,' the representative of a nation, seems fitter to 
express ' for a generation ' than ' the days of a man ' 
would have been : and we may compare the phrase with 
'the days of a hireling,' in chapters xvi. 14, xxi. 16. At 
the end of this time, Jehovah will visit Tyre : the old 
alliance, 'the brotherly covenant,' shall be renewed with 
Israel, and Tyre shall share with the other nations of the 
earth the blessings which Isaiah promises to them all in 
turn, when they shall have come, through sufferings, to the 
knowledge of the God of Israel. Then Israel will have a 
part in the worldly prosperity of Tyre, as Tyre in . her 
spiritual. This restoration of Tyre is foretold by a strange 
though expressive image : — at the end of seventy years 
Tyre shall again play the harlot with all the nations of the 
earth : and her gains shall be holiness to Jehovah. The 
harlot* converts into a matter of traffic what should be a 
sacred relationship : so trade brings men together merely 
as buyers and sellers, not as brethren ; and consequently 
rapidly degenerates from self-interest into selfishness, 
unless it be perpetually counter-balanced by other and 
nobler aims in the man. The Hebrew lawgivers and 
prophets saw that, in their times, and for their nation, 
such counterpoises could not be made effectual, and there- 
fore discouraged commerce itself : and the contemptuous 
image of the harlot implies this feeling here, though we 
have at the same time the recognition that trade is not 
essentially evil in the declaration that its gains shall be 
dedicated to J ehovah. The Mosaic law expressly forbids the 
offering to Jehovah the gains of a harlot, and this may 
tell us that Isaiah has here laid aside his illustration, as 
poets and orators do, as soon as the momentary purpose is 
served, though to the perplexity of their prosaic commen- 

* Harlot is 1 hire-lot,' and originally synonymous with ' hireling.' Chaucer 
say 8 of the ' Sompnour,' or servant of the ecclesiastical court, 
'He was a gentle harlot, and a kind.' 



THE SONG OF TYRE. 



265 



tators. The translation — ' it shall be to Tyre as the song 
of the harlot/ and the explanation that verse 16 is not 
Isaiah's address to Tyre, but an extract from some popular 
song of the day called ' the harlot's song,' is preferred by 
most modern translators. But such criticism seems to me 
somewhat fanciful. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



ISAIAH XXIV. XXVII. — UTTER DESOLATION OF JUDAH — ACTUALLY CAUSED BY 

THE ASSYRIAN ARMIES. — NATIONAL COVENANT BROKEN BY AHAZ HE 

SHUTS THE TEMPLE. — GOD'S COUNSELS OF OLD. — MOAB PUT FOR ASSYRIA. — 
PATIENCE IN NATIONAL CALAMITIES. — THE WIFE DIVORCED, AND TAKEN 
BACK. — THE SILVER TRUMPET SOUNDED. EXPANSION OF ISAIAH'S VIEWS. 

ISAIAH xxiv. to xxvii. : — It is agreed that these chapters 
form a continuous discourse. The older controversy 
as to its subject, has naturally produced the modern one 
— in which the rationalists differ among themselves as 
well as from the orthodox — as to its date and author. I 
say naturally, because there is no more frequent, I might 
almost say constant, phenomena in Biblical criticism than 
this, that the reaction against the orthodox interpretations 
makes it impossible for the student who is under its in- 
fluence simply to examine the text as it is : he must find 
some explanation which shall not merely explain the text 
but shall also be as strong and hostile a protest as possible 
against the orthodox interpretation. But I would ask the 
reader who has accompanied me thus far, still to adhere 
to the method which has served us hitherto, taking the 
text as it stands, and considering that Isaiah is, as usual, 
setting forth — forth-telling rather than foretelling — uni- 
versal laws, with a special (and to us chiefly illustrative) 
application to his own times. 

The contents agree well with the date which is indi- 
cated by the place of the prophecy in the book : — namely, 
about the time that Sennacherib was besieging Lachish or 
Libnah.* Samaria, which fell into the power of the 
Assyrians in the sixth year of Hezekiah, and from that 
time became available as one of their military posts and 
bases of operation, was about thirty miles from Jerusalem. 

* See below, chapter xx. 



ISAIAH XXIV. 1—23. THE JUDGMENT 267 



So were Lachish and Libnah ; and therefore we have 
only to remember the extent of ground that a large 
army covers, and the way in which even modern Christian 
armies, and much more those of ancient barbarians, sweep, 
and always used to sweep, whole countries with ' the 
besom of destruction,' to understand that Isaiah's picture 
of what he and his fellow citizens were seeing around them, 
and daily expecting, is no exaggeration of reality. Facts, 
at such times, go beyond the strongest imagination. And 
we shall have a more accurate conception of the state of 
things, if we remember that this last invasion of Senna- 
cherib came upon a people already exhausted by the 
repeated calamities which, from the end of the reign of 
Jotham, had fallen on them from every quarter. We may 
here look back with advantage to chapter i., which, what- 
ever its date, describes precisely the condition of Judea and 
Jerusalem, about the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign. 

The Hebrew employs the same word for ' earth ' and 
'land,' and a translation will best approach this poetic 
indefiniteness, by giving sometimes one, and sometimes 
the other. I might make a like remark as to the inter- 
change of the perfect and imperfect tenses ; but I hope 
the reader has already sufficiently realized this character- 
istic, to find it a help rather than a hindrance to his 
enjoyment and appreciation of the Hebrew seers. 

Jehovah is come to judge his people. Ahaz shut up 
the temple, and altogether changed the national worship 
for idolatry : and though this public and open ' transgres- 
sion of the laws, change of the ordinance, and breach of 
the covenant' with the Lord of the nation, was publicly 
atoned for by Hezekiah, yet there was but too much 
evidence that the greater part of the people were still, as 
to heart and faith, better represented by Ahaz than by 
his pious son and successor : and therefore Jehovah was 
' turning upside down ' the whole country — man and beast, 
cultivated fields and walled cities, political order and social 
relations — emptying out and scattering its contents, as if 
it were a bottle, or other vessel. The prophet sees Jeru- 
salem in confusion, taken by assault, and the people in 
voluntary exile or in captivity. 



268 THE LAND LAID WASTE. 

But from the beginning it was a part of his office to 
preach that ' a remnant should return and (whether 
alluding or not to any passing event we cannot now say) 
he sees this remnant, brought through suffering to the 
knowledge of Jehovah, and raising songs of praise to him 
in the various lands in which they are scattered. Their 
lot seems to him even better than his own and that of his 
countrymen at home ; for at home the spoiler and the 
' treacherous dealer' are upon them, they are hunted from 
one refuge to another, and the windows of heaven are 
opened as in the days of Noah, and the foundations of the 
earth shaken as with a universal earthquake : — ' Broken, 
all broken is the earth ; shattered, all shattered is the 
earth ; the earth doth quake, doth quake exceedingly ; 
the earth doth reel, doth reel, like a drunken man, and 
swayeth to and fro like a hammock.' — Such is the more 
literal rendering ; the verbs (as in verse 3) are repeated 
in the intensive form, in the Hebrew ; and I do not see 
that its wild force is not admissible into an English 
version. The hammock (the same word as in chap. i. 8) 
is still used throughout the East by the night- watchers of 
vineyards. 

Most commentators understand ' the host of the high 
ones on high' in verse 21 to be angels good or bad, or 
even those angelic princes represented in the book of 
Daniel as the lords of the several nations : but it seems 
simpler to take the words in their natural connection with 
the 'moon' and the ' sun ' in the 23rd verse, and not to 
attempt to define and fix the image more than the prophet 
himself has done. Some thought of spiritual powers sup- 
porting the kings of the earth, there probably is here as in 
the words of J eremiah — ' Behold I will punish the multi- 
tude of No, and Pharaoh and Egypt with their gods and 
their kings ; '* or as when Isaiah himself says — ' The idols 
are moved at his presence ;'t — but I see no reason for 
finding here the later demonology of the Jews. 

In that day Jehovah will come to judge both the host 
of heaven and the kings of the earth who have been the 
instruments of his righteous judgments : they shall be 

* Chap. xlvi. 25. f Chap. xix. 1. 



ISAIAH XXV. i— 12. GOD'S COUNSELS. 269 



visited first with punishment, and afterwards with pardon, 
while the Lord of hosts shall establish his kingdom in 
Zion, and call his servants — the Hezekiahs, Eliakims, 
Isaiahs, and the body of faithful and holy men, in that as 
in every other age — to be his senators, his council and 
fellow-workers in his glorious reign. 

The prophet speaks, or writes, in the actual, and ap- 
parently increasing, desolation of his own country : but he 
has such clear and bright views of God's counsels and 
plans from the beginning, and of the wonderful way in 
which he works them out in faithful conformity to his 
original design, that they present themselves to his illu- 
mined eye as already accomplished : and while he sees 
Jehovah reigning gloriously in Jerusalem on the one hand, 
on the other he contemplates the defenced cities of the 
terrible nations — Babylon or Nineveh, and the whole 
polity of arbitrary godless power, which they represent — 
reduced to a heap of ruins ; and the furious rage of those 
nations which was now breaking upon Judea like a hurri- 
cane, he sees brought down as quietly and as completely 
as the burning heat of an Eastern sun is subdued by the 
shadow of a cloud. And thus passing from images of 
violence to those of gentleness, he contemplates the day 
when all the nations and peoples over whom the dark 
covering of that heathen tyranny is now spread, shall come 
up to keep the feast at Jerusalem, in fellowship with 
Israel, and shall there rejoice with them in worshipping 
Jehovah and receiving his laws. The Assyrians them- 
selves do not seem to be included here, or in any part of 
these chapters, among the nations to be thus blessed ; 
unless it be in verse 22 of chapter xxiv., and there it is 
doubtful if such be the meaning. The faith that even 
Assyria was eventually to become a part with Israel of the 
inheritance of Jehovah, is unequivocally expressed in 
chapter xix. : but we cannot wonder that Isaiah should 
have ordinarily spoken of this cruel tyranny as merely evil 
and obnoxious to entire destruction : nay, we may say, 
that — considering the unavoidable limitations which con- 
trol human thought and language — less extreme denuncia- 
tions would not have declared, in the way which the 



2 7 o ISAIAH XXVI i— 14. THE SONG OF JOY. 



circumstances of Isaiah and his countrymen needed, that 
Jehovah was the righteous and unsparing judge of all 
selfish, godless, tyranny and rapacity. 

I have already noticed the idiom by which, in all pro- 
bability, Moab is here (xxv. 1 0) put for Assyria, as Babylon 
in the Book of Revelation means Rome. Isaiah's exube- 
rance of imagination, and love of concreteness — elsewhere 
exhibited by such names as 1 The desert of the sea,' ' The 
valley of vision,' ' Ariel the city where David dwelt,'' — 
may sufficiently account for the usage : but it is worth 
while to consider that in times of strong and deep re- 
ligious enthusiasm, such as our Civil War, or the days of 
Wesley and Whitfield, when men would be more than 
usually apt to choose the most expressive, instead of merely 
traditional phrases, these concrete symbols become especial 
favourites. The ' fortress ' in verse 12, and the ' lofty city' 
of verse 5 in the next chapter, are plainly the same as the 
' palace of strangers,' and ' city of the terrible nations,' 
above. With these, and their fall, Isaiah now con- 
trasts the strong city in the land of Judah, which has 
the salvation of Jehovah for its walls and bulwarks. And 
he puts into the mouth of the people of Judah, a song, 
such as they were accustomed to sing, as they went up 
from their houses to the temple, in festive procession, 
to worship. It was not very long since Hezekiah had 
opened the gates of the temple, shut by the profane Ahaz, 
and had renewed the public worship of J ehovah with burnt 
offerings accompanied by ' the song of Jehovah, and with 
trumpets and the instruments of David :' * but on less 
grave occasions than their return from national apostasy, 
the opening of the gates of the temple to receive the pro- 
cession of worshippers seems to have been a solemn cere- 
monial ;f and here Isaiah represents the temple receiving 
the redeemed and righteous nation which by keeping to 
its faith and trust in Jehovah, has obtained peace of heart 
instead of the miserable state of anxiety, and national 
deliverance instead of the foreign oppression described in 
chapter xxiv. The Temple and Jerusalem itself stand on 
a rock ; but their true foundation is the Rock of Ages, 

* Chron. xxix. 3, 27—30. f Psalm xxiv. 6, 7, 9 ; cxviii. 19. 



PATIENT TRUST IN JEHOVAH. 



271 



Jehovah himself. The image of the tyrant city brought 
to the dust, and trodden by the feet of the poor, suggests 
the thought of the path in which those feet had previously 
been walking. It led though the midst of God's judg- 
ments, through a land ' devoured by the curse but they 
waited patiently, and found that God was leading them all 
the way, and making the path level and straight before 
them as they went. The 'waiting' suggests a new image : 
during the long night of Assyrian oppression, their soul 
had longed for rest, or for the morning to close a night in 
which no rest was possible ; and with the first dawn of 
deliverance their spirit would spring forth to new activity, 
desirous to practise the righteousness it had learnt through 
affliction. But there are some so reprobate that neither 
correction nor mercy will teach them righteousness : even 
in the restored and holy nation they will continue their 
evil doings, their selfishness and their oppression of the 
poor, and will refuse to recognize the invisible King and 
his laws : and therefore the zeal of J ehovah in the restora- 
tion of his true people shall prove a consuming fire to 
destroy these his enemies. Verse 12 corresponds with 
our prayer, ' Give peace in our time, 0 Lord, for there is 
none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, 0 God :' 
other lords have had dominion over the nation, because 
it has chosen other gods ; but henceforth Judah will wor- 
ship no God but Jehovah, and he will again be both God 
and King to her, while those other kings and gods are 
become dead men and spectres, never to rise to life 
and power again. The word translated ' shades ' in verse 
14, and 'dead' at the end of verse 19,~' r is 'rephaim' and 
means both ' giants ' and ' silent ones ;' so that it expresses 
a notion something like that of our word ' spectres :' 
this word, and other parts of the imagery, indicate a con- 
nection between these verses, and the 21st ; and there 
will not be much difficulty in following this connection if 
we remember that it is an under-current of poetical 
imagination, and not a series of dry syllogisms ; and that, 
as is usual with Isaiah, there is a certain alternation of 
ideas, which makes the light and dark, the present and the 

* As in chap. xiv. 9. 



ISAIAH XXVI. 15—21. RESURRECTION. 



future, of the vision, rise and fall like the waves of the 
sea. Thus, no sooner has the thought of the destroyed 
heathens suggested that of the increased numbers and 
prosperity of Israel, than the prophet is reminded that, 
instead of their being able to rejoice in any such increase, 
they are like women who have not brought forth children, 
and whose prayers* and pains are without result : but 
immediately his confidence revives : — Judah's dead, and 
shades of the dead, the dwellers in the grave and the un- 
seen world, are not like Assyria's dead ; for a dew, such as 
makes the grass grow, is fallen upon them, and they shall 
' awake and sing,' — Judah shall not merely bring forth 
more children in the place of those she has lost, but the 
very earth shall give birth to those already dead. Some 
commentators prefer to read ' Might thy dead live ! might 
my dead bodies arise ! ' in the optative : and the question 
is discussed — not without reference to the disputed date of 
the prophecy — how far these words, with either rendering, 
imply a belief in the resurrection of individuals from the 
dead. I should say that they declare that the now de- 
populated land shall again be full of inhabitants, and that 
the image of a resurrection under which this declaration is 
made implies some belief, though it cannot be said how 
definite or indefinite, in the possibility if not the certainty 
of such a resurrection. The present is a time of affliction : 
— Yes, but only for 'a little moment;' and Jehovah's 
people have only to wait patiently, and they will see him 
come to deliver them, and to punish all evil-doers ; and then 
the earth will disclose and give up her slain for another 
purpose — that they may rise in the judgment against the 
tyrants of whose guilt there seemed no evidence. The 
' song ' which began in verse 1 is considered to end with 
verse 19, while verse 20 declares, in Jehovah's name, that 
it is only necessary to wait a short time for ' that day ' in 
which the song may be fitly sung : but I have some doubt 

* A whispered prayer: ' beautifully expressive,' says Alexander, 'of 
submissive, humble prayer, like that of Hannah when " she spake in her 
heart and only her lips moved but her voice was not heard," although, as she 
said herself, " she poured out her soul before God," which is the exact sense 
of f^pS in this place. A like expression is applied to prayer in the title of 
Psalm cii.' The whole description of Hannah, 1 Samuel i., is apposite. 



ISAIAH XXVII. i— 13. JEHOVAH'S VINEYARD. 273 



whether these precise, classic-like demarcations, are not as 
foreign to the Hebrew and prophetic genius as they are 
difficult to determine without arbitrary changes of the 
literal sense of the text. The ' entering into the cham- 
bers ' may, not improbably, allude to the command that 
the children of Israel should not go out during the night 
of the destruction of the first-born of Egypt : and if we do 
not, with Grotius, suppose another allusion to Hezekiah's 
shutting himself within the walls of Jerusalem till Sen- 
nacherib's army was cut off, the correspondence of the two 
may perhaps be attributed to the influence which a poet's 
imagination must always feel from the important events 
about him at the time. The idea of Jehovah, the king, 
leaving his royal residence, visiting the places where crime 
has been committed, and judging and executing sentence 
on the criminal, we have had before. 

' Leviathan ' (which in Job means the crocodile), and 
'the dragon' or sea-serpent, may either be all names 
for the Assyrian oppressor, or they may represent both 
Assyria and Egypt, and so correspond with the reference 
to those two nations in verses 12 and 13. As regards 
the various endeavours to settle the rhythmical construc- 
tion of verses 3 — 5 of this (27th) chapter, it is enough 
for me to refer to what I have said above and elsewhere, 
as to the attempts at classical demarcations ; and to 
observe that the briars and thorns seem to be the evil 
part of the Jewish nation, which needed to be cleared out 
of the vineyard, rather than the foreign power which was 
made the instrument of that clearance. The ' taking hold 
of my strength ' is best explained by the double image of 
taking refuge in a fortress, and at the horns of the altar. 
The exact meaning of the words in verse 8 is obscure ; 
but it possibly involves the image of Jehovah inflicting on 
his faithless bride the moderate punishment of a divorce, 
for which ' contending ' and ' sending away ' are the legal 
phrases ; while the temporariness of the punishment is 
indicated by ' the day of the east wind,' as though the 
duration was limited by the time of the storm. The result 
of this punishment shall be that the images, or the groves, 
of Baal and Astarte shall be thrown down, and their altars 

T 



274 THE SILVER TRUMPET SOUNDED. 



broken up, and the fragments scattered about like the 
chalks tones which (as Strabo mentions) were familiar 
objects on the ground near Jerusalem. But the heathen 
enemies of Israel are incapable of reformation, because 
they are ' a people of no understanding ;' and therefore 
the prophet foretells their utter destruction : he transfers 
to them the image of the vineyard, and pictures it as the 
prey of the weakest destroyers (compare ' feet of the 
needy ' above) : — the calf shall browse on the green vines, 
and when they are withered, the women shall gather them 
for firewood. In that day Jehovah will gather (literally 
' beat,' or ' thresh,' as the manner was) the fruit of his 
oliveyards, and gather the remnant of his own people from 
the north to the south, from the Euphrates to the torrent 
now called El-Arish,* collecting them with such care — 
literally ' one to one,' — that not one shall be lost. The 
great silver trumpet, the blast of which, from the days of 
Moses in the wilderness, had gathered the princes to council, 
mustered the hosts in the camp, or called Jehovah and his 
people to remember the national covenant ' in the day of 
their gladness, in their solemn days, and over the sacrifices 
of their burnt offerings and their peace offerings,' f shall 
be heard in that day of Jehovah : — ' And they shall come 
which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the 
outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship Jehovah 
in the holy mount at Jerusalem.' 

It would be no less silly than dishonest to pretend that 
these chapters are by Isaiah, if there were evidence to the 
contrary : and if their genuineness were merely doubtful, 
we must abstain from drawing from them any of those 
historical or biographical conclusions which authentic 
documents might supply as to the times and character of 
the writer. But in as far as I may venture to form an 
opinion, I must say that the sceptical criticism has not, 
as to these chapters, even an appearance of more than 
ingenious trifling ; the arguments founded on asserted 
peculiarities of style and diction in the original, are, as 
usual, met by counter-arguments, or positive denials of the 

* Genesis xv. 18 ; 1 Kings viii. 65. 
f Numters x. 1 — 10 ; Jeremiah iv. 5; Joel ii. 1, 15. 



EXPANSION OF ISAIAH'S VIEWS. 



facts,* on the part of the orthodox scholars, as well as of 
the non-orthodox Kosenmiiller : my own views on the 
possibility of proving anything by such arguments I have 
already stated. And therefore, since Isaiah's name is on 
the old, genuine title-page, and only omitted in the 
modern, hypothetically-constructed one, let the reader 
keep, like me, within the limits of ordinary, matter-of-fact, 
common-sense, English criticism, and then he will see 
something better worth his notice than whole continents 
of cloud-land. This is the fact that while we recog- 
nize, throughout these chapters, the old familiar features 
— the accustomed political faith and poetic genius — of 
Isaiah, we see how ' the years that bring the philosophic 
mind,' and still more the sufferings, personal and national, 
which are God's opportunity for developing the spiritual 
life, were now telling upon the prophet. The tone is more 
subdued, and gentler ; the evangelical temper shows itself 
increasingly through the patriotic ; political events are 
more subordinate to the universal life of things ; and the 
national faith in the Lord of Judah and of the Jew, is 
brought into more intimate dependence on the deeper 
trust in him as the Lord of the Church and of the spirit 
of man. 

That a like religious temper of mind might be property 
attributed to an imaginary prophet, living in Babylon 
during the exile, or in J erusalem in the time of Cambyses, 
I allow : but historical fact, and coherent romance, are not 
the same thing. 

* Delitzsch says ' It is just as certain that the cycle of prophecy in chapters 
xxiv. — xxvii. belongs to Isaiah, and not to any other prophet, as it is that 
there are not two men to be found in the world with faces exactly alike.' 
And he supports this conclusion by a detailed criticism of the style and diction 
of these chapters. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



ISAIAH XXVIII. — XXXV. POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS PROSPECTS OF JUDAH. — 

ARIEL, THE LION OF GOD. — WORLDLY STATE-CRAFT. — TRUE INSIGHT. — THE 

EMBASSY TO EGYPT. PERSECUTION OF THE PROPHETS. DUMB IDOLS AND 

THE UNSEEN TEACHER. — THE HOLY SOLEMNITIES. — TALMUDICAL ACCOUNT 
OF FESTIVE PROCESSIONS. — THE STROKE OF DOOM ON SENNACHERIB. — 

THE REAL DELIVERER. SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. THE SIEGE 

RAISED. — EDOM PUT FOR ASSYRIA. RETURN OF THE RANSOMED CAPTIVES. 

ISAIAH xxviii. to xxxv. — The correspondence of thoughts 
and images, and the unity of subject and sentiment, 
seem to mark these eight chapters as successive paragraphs 
or sections of one prophecy, representing an original series 
of discourses which may have been spread over several 
months at least, from the embassy to Egypt to the arrival 
of Rabshakeh before Jerusalem, or even till after the 
disaster which compelled Sennacherib's retreat : and with 
this qualification the whole contents accord with the date 
indicated by their place in the book. The only difficulty 
is that involved in the reference to Ephraim at the 
beginning of the first of these chapters. For if we take 
this to imply that Samaria had not yet fallen we must give 
the first four verses a date several years antecedent to that 
which is most suitable to the rest of this chapter as well 
as to those which follow. The descriptions by modern 
travellers of the beauty and richness of the hill of Samaria 
with terraced heights rising out of a fertile valley, certainly 
tempt us to adhere to the literal explanation of the phrase 
' drunkards of Ephraim ; ' and the difficulty is then best met 
in the way I have pointed out as to chapter xvii. ; but the 
phrase is exactly analogous to 'men of Sodom,' in chapter i., as 
well as to the ordinary language of all the Hebrew writers, 
and may be taken without any violence to mean the lead- 
ing men of Jerusalem, to whom all the rest of the chapter 



ISA I A H XX VIII. i — 15. THE DRUNKARDS. 277 



relates. Isaiah fuses into one image, the heads of the 
nation, crowned with flowers at their habitual debauches, 
and the capital cities — Samaria and Jerusalem — each re- 
posing in its fertile valley, and crowned with a chaplet of 
powers intertwined with vines and olives : the flowers are 
of themselves fading, and Jehovah will follow up on Judah 
the punishment he has already inflicted upon Ephraim, by 
casting their revellers' crowns to the ground with a strong 
hand, and trampling them under foot : — employing as his 
instrument the overwhelming flood of Assyrian invasion. 
Yet this wrath is but the means of love : its purpose is that 
Jehovah himself may become the crown of glory and the 
diadem of beauty to all those who — not being utterly cor- 
rupt — shall remain from this purification of the land. In 
that day he will be wisdom to the judge, and in his strength 
the soldier shall turn back the tide of battle to the enemy's 
gate.* 

But at present not only are these — the hereditary nobles 
and heads of tribes, and the elected or appointed judges — 
wanting alike in military ability, and in judicial upright- 
ness, but the priests (including the Levites) and the pro- 
phets — the ministers of national worship, and the teachers 
and controllers of education of the whole people — are equally 
' gone out of the way through strong drink.' Drunken- 
ness was no doubt literally the habitual vice of the higher 
orders in Isaiah's time ; and then, as in all times, it was 
the symbol of every kind of debased subjection of the 
human, to the animal, nature. Such nobles could not 
govern; such judges could not administer, nor such priests 
expound, the law ; nor was any ' vision ' possible to pro- 
phets in whom the eye of reason and of faith was thus 
obscured. Lowth's explanation, that verses 9 and 10 are 
a scoffing speech of the drunken prophets, is usually pre- 
ferred,! and I have printed the English text in that form. 
Yet I have some doubt, as I have before said, whether these 
dramatic speeches may not be inventions of the commenta- 

* 2 Sam. xi. 23 ; 2 Kings xviii. 8. 

t Mr. Cheyne translates — ' Correct, correct, correct, correct ; direct, di- 
rect, direct, direct ' — and in a note says — ' Heb. sav lasav kav lakav, words 
evidently chosen for the sake of their assonance, to represent the stammer of a 
drunkard.' 



278 POLITICS OF 'THE SCORNFUL RULERS: 



tors ; and the sense is as clear, if we understand Isaiah to 
ask how it is possible in this general debasement to find 
any one capable of learning true wisdom, and then to add 
(in the tone of remonstrance adopted in the epistle to the 
Hebrews), that though the nation was no longer in its 
infancy, and ought to be capable of manly knowledge, yet 
it did in fact require to be instructed again in the very 
rudiments, and to have these impressed on it by perpetual 
repetition. And then — whether the thought is suggested 
by that of drunken and scoffing stutterers, or of children 
unapt to learn — he tells them that Jehovah will send them 
a teacher who shall speak to them with the barbarous 
Assyrian tongue : they will then hear words very different 
from those which they now despise because they proclaim, 
' This is the rest ; cause the weary to rest ; ' and they will 
then find these repeated warnings become their condemna- 
tion, because they will have deprived them of all excuse. 

He anticipates the answer of 1 the scornful men that 
rule this people in Jerusalem;' for has he not heard it 
often enough, year after year ? It was their policy which 
in the time of Ahaz had delivered Judah from her im- 
minent danger by bringing Tiglath-Pileser upon Syria and 
Ephraim : and if it was at the sacrifice of Judah' s inde- 
pendence, and at the price of much tribute, to say nothing 
of the destruction of the sister-people of their own race, 
yet these evils were nothing in comparison of the advan- 
tages; for they touched them — the rich nobles in Jerusalem 
— but little, seeing they had the land and the remaining 
wealth of the country accumulated in their hands, and 
could by suitable perversion of the law wring out from the 
poor enough means of luxury to last their time, whatever 
might happen afterwards. Besides, they had not only 
secured themselves by a treaty with that personification of 
death and hell, the Assyrian, but they had outwitted him, 
— for what chance could a mere barbarian soldier have 
against the deep-laid policy of an old, long-civilized state ? 
they were in communication with Egypt and Ethiopia, and 
at the proper time they would bring the armies of Tirhakeh 
to free them from the power of Sennacherib. And to this 
the prophet replies, that when the storm does sweep over 



ISAIAH XXVIII. 16—29. A PARA B IE. 279 



the land, as it assuredly will, these ' refuges of lies ' will 
prove no shelter to their builders ; they have been tried 
by the plummet of honesty and righteousness, and found 
to be so out of line that they must come down : but mean- 
while, nay from of old, J ehovah has himself founded a really 
serviceable house for his people — namely, the ancient con- 
stitution and polity of which he himself is the chief corner- 
stone ; and the man who trusts in that foundation, believing 
that it really is there, will not be urged to any impatient 
acts of panic, whatever may be the apparent danger. The 
reader will remember the descriptions of the enormous 
corner-stones in ancient Jewish buildings : and will com- 
pare our Lord's parable of the house founded on the rock. 
There is a doubt whether the last clause in. verse 1 9 can 
be fairly translated ' Only to hear the report shall be a 
distress ;' and whether it is not better to read, 'And afflic- 
tion alone will make you understand doctrine,' alluding to 
verse 9, where the last two words of the original are the 
same. 

Jehovah will break forth upon his own people, as he 
did in old times upon the heathen Philistines ; * it is a 
' strange work' thus to afflict and destroy the people of his 
love, as though they were heathens : but he has determined 
to do it, — to execute justice to the uttermost ; therefore 
let the mockers take heed that they do not make this 
determination more stringent upon themselves, by perse- 
vering in their evil way. Then the prophet propounds 
a parable : the husbandman has a place, and a time, for 
each successive operation of his husbandry ; he now ploughs, 
now harrows, sowing one seed broad-cast, and another in 
rows ; beats out the light aniseed (perhaps used then, as 
now in Italy, to flavour the bread as well as to make spirit) 
with a rod, and the corn with the heavy threshing- wain ; 
while both the heavier and the lighter of these operations 
are carefully regulated so as to do no damage. All these 
processes — in which we notice that the harsh ones of break- 
ing up the land and threshing out the grain predominate — 
are taught the husbandman by God ; and their order and 
skilful arrangement are the reflection of his wisdom and 

* 2 Sam. v. 18—25 ; 1 Chron. xiv. 9—16. 



28o ISAIAH XXIX. 1—3. THE LION OF GOD. 



plans. Isaiah leaves it to his hearers to apply the parable 
to their own case, and so to understand how Jehovah is 
regulating all his dealings with the nation, to the end that 
he too may gather the wheat into his garner at last. 

Chapter xxix. The simplest meaning of ' Ariel' is 
' lion of God;' but it also signifies 'hearth of God' when 
derived from another root. In the former sense it comes 
to mean ' a hero,' as in 2 Sam. xxiii. 20 ; Isaiah xxxiii. 7 ; 
and in the latter it occurs in Ezekiel xliii. 15, 16, for the 
brazen hearth of the great altar of burnt offerings, thence 
commonly called ' the brazen,' though the rest of it was of 
stone. There is no doubt that Jerusalem is pointed out 
by this enigmatical name ; and the immediate context, 
as well as the expression in chapter xxxi. 9 — ' Jehovah 
whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem,' — 
make it probable that Isaiah intended to involve both 
meanings in the word, as though he had said, ' Woe to 
the city of heroes, woe to the city of sacrifices : it shall 
now be put to the test what God and what man think as 
to both.' 

David, that lion of God, had first encamped against 
Jerusalem, and then made it the abode of his royal house, 
and the capital of his kingdom ; so that it became itself 
an Ariel, a lion of God, in the land : — 

' Judah is a lion's whelp : 
From the prey, my son, thou art gone up : 
He stooped down, he couched as a lion, 
And as an old lion : who shall rouse him up ? 
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, 
Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, 
Until Shiloh come ; 

And unto him shall the gathering of the people be.' 

And after the vicissitudes of 300 years, and in the midst 
of present dangers, the people of J erusalem were still con- 
fident in the strength of their ' lion of God,' and year by 
year came up to the public festivals to lay their accustomed 
offerings on the ' altar of God ; ' though with little remem- 
brance that it was not in the altar and the city, but in 
Jehovah himself, that David put trust, and found his 
strength. Therefore J ehovah will bring Ariel low ; the 
proud roar of the lion shall be changed for the weak, 



WORLDLY STATE-CRAFT. 



281 



stridulous voice, which the art of the ventriloquizing 
necromancer brings out of the ground ; and the enemies 
of Jehovah shall be sacrificed and consumed on the hearth 
of his altar. First, his spiritual enemies among the Jews 
themselves, but afterwards the heathen oppressors of his 
people ; and the lion shall recover his God-derived 
strength ; and thus both in adversity and in success, ' it 
shall be unto me as Ariel.' — ' He who threatens your 
destruction shall vanish like a dream, " par levibus ventis 
volu crique simillima somno :" he who threatens your de- 
struction shall awake as from a dream, and find himself 
cheated of his expectations ; for — as Grotius beautifully 
says — " spes sunt vigilantium somnia." ' * 

Some commentators understand the words ' Add ye 
year to year' to mean that at the end of one or two years 
from that time J erusalem should be besieged : but the 
other way of understanding it is at least as simple and as 
forcible. 

The inhabitants of the now self-satisfied city draw 
themselves back in incredulous and contemptuous wonder 
on hearing Isaiah's warnings : and therefore he tells them, 
that they, their rulers, and their teachers, are so besotted — 
not with the transient effects of wine, but with the 
abiding pressure of sin, — that they can comprehend 
nothing of God's methods and purposes. Where no 
vision — no insight into the divine government of the 
world — is, the people perisheth ; and such is the present 
condition of Jerusalem and Judah, of the learned and the 
unlearned alike. And the reason is, that though they 
continue in the routine observance of all such maxims and 
rules of morality and religion as the existing standards of 
social respectability demand ; yet they have no inward 

* Alexander on the verse : he also quotes from Barnes a passage in one of 
Mungo Park's Journals : — 'No sooner had I shut my eyes than fancy would 
convey me to the streams and rivers of my native land. There as I wandered 
along the verdant hank, I surveyed the clear stream with transport, and 
hastened to swallow the delightful draught ; but, alas ! disappointment 
awaked me, and I found myself a lonely captive, perishing of thirst, amid 
the wilds of Africa.' Lowth quotes from Lucretius — 

' Ac veluti in somnis sitiens quum quserit, et humor 
Non datur, ardorern in membris qui stinguere possit, 
Sed laticum simulacra petit, frustraque laborat, 
In medioque sitit torrenti fiumine potans.' 



282 TRUE INSIGHT AND FORESIGHT. 



love and fear of God in their hearts. They wonder how 
Isaiah can pretend to teach them, the wise and prudent ; 
but they will wonder in another fashion when they see 
what Jehovah actually does : they are satisfied that their 
astute counsels, though hidden as it seems from Jehovah, 
are quite competent to meet the dangers with which his 
prophet threatens them ; but they will find that it is not 
from Jehovah, but from its own confusion and disgrace, 
that this policy will have to hide itself. They have been 
turning things upside down at their own will : they put 
bitter for sweet, and call good, evil : they rest the home 
government, and the social prosperity of the country, upon 
a basis of oppression of the poor and aggrandizement of the 
rich by abuse of the powers of law and order ; and the 
foreign relations of the state, on treaties degrading in 
themselves, and never intended to be kept faithfully, with 
Assyria and Egypt : and with all these schemes and 
practices they mean to restore, or prop up, the falling con- 
dition of a nation which has never yet prospered, except 
by adherence to the old fundamental principle of its con- 
stitution, — faith in Jehovah, and in the covenant by which 
he became their King, and they his people, with mutual 
rights and duties. Isaiah can be as contemptuous as these 
' scornful men ' themselves ; and he tells them that all this 
scheming, all this turning of things upside down, is but so 
much clay in the hands of the Potter, who will do just 
what he originally intended, carrying out exactly the 
designs laid down by him from the first : — all the turning 
upside down in the world will not alter the relation 
between the thing made and its maker. In a very little 
while there shall, indeed, be a complete reversion of the 
present state of things. The land was now ruled by men 
who were always on the watch for iniquity ; who made a 
man obnoxious to the forms of law for trifles which had no 
criminal intent, in order to bring him under their extor- 
tions if they wanted his property, or under their crushing 
power if they wished to silence him because he dared to 
plead for justice, or rebuke the unjust ruler as he sat in 
the gate ; and this force was constantly used in the one 
case and the other (as the whole history of the Jews shows 



ISAIAH XXX. 1—26. THE EMBASSY TO EGYPT. 283 



us), with no check but the victim's death. But these men 
shall be cut off, and cease ; the Holy One of Israel will re- 
establish his authority ; his word and his works shall be 
heard and seen of all men ; and the poor and the meek 
will rejoice in his protection and strength. The house of 
Jacob might, and must, be brought low for a time, for its 
sins ; he might be ashamed at his humiliation, and his 
face might wax pale at the prospect of his name being put 
out from among the nations, through the slaughter and 
captivity of his children : but Jehovah who redeemed 
Abraham out of the naturalism in which he was living 
Avith the rest of his race, who gave him a spiritual position, 
and a promise to him and to his children, founded on that 
spiritual position, — He will remember his promise, and 
bring back to Jacob his children ; and they too, like their 
first fathers, shall be seen to be not a race of merely 
natural, earthly creatures, but 'the work of Jehovah's 
hands,' a chosen, spiritually organized people, capable of 
true wisdom and true obedience, and of actual fellowship 
and communion with the Holy God. 

Chapter xxx. begins with a new and more direct denun- 
ciation of the Egyptian alliance, devised by the men who 
' wove a web ' of plots, or sought to ' cover themselves with 
a covering,' which Isaiah called 1 a refuge of lies,' in 
chap, xxviii. Zoan, the Tanis of the Greeks, was a royal 
city, and one of the most ancient of Lower Egypt. Hanes 
is probably Hnes or Ehnes, the Anysis of Herodotus, and 
the Heracleopolis which was the capital of a nome of 
Middle Egypt, and a royal city, as may be inferred from 
Manetho's mention of two Heracleote dynasties. And if 
there were two or more contemporaiy kings in Egypt at 
this period (on which point the opposing facts have been 
already stated), it would seem not unlikely that the Jewish 
ambassadors may have sought Tirhakeh at the latter city ; 
and, at the former, Sethos, the Tanitic king of whose in- 
vasion by Sennacherib Herodotus relates the well-known 
story. 

The first words of verse 6 — 1 The burden of the beasts 
of the south' — have been much discussed. Some com- 
mentators take ' burden ' in the sense of ' prophecy ' or 



284 THE EGYPTIAN ALLIANCE. 

' vision,' as in chapter xxi. and elsewhere ; but are then 
again divided in opinion as to whether the words are a 
marginal gloss which has been erroneously brought into 
the text, or an episodical title introduced by Isaiah himself, 
as though he paused somewhat abruptly and said — ' That 
caravan of asses and camels struggling through the sandy 
desert among the lions and serpents, rises before me as 
a distinct vision, and deserves a paragraph of its own.' 
Others understand ' burden ' in its literal meaning, and 
explain it as referring to the heavy load of presents with 
which the asses and camels travelling southward are laden ; 
and then the sentence will be translated — ' Oh, the burden 
of the beasts ; ' ' what a burden to the beasts ; ' or ' as to 
the beasts.' 

' Rahab ' is used here, as elsewhere, to signify Egypt ; 
but it is uncertain whether it is an Egyptian word and 
name of the country, or only an enigmatical Hebrew name, 
like ' Ariel.' The Hebrew means 1 rage,' or ' insolence,' 
and thence, in the opinion of some authorities, a ' sea 
monster.' We may therefore either read, 'Therefore I call 
her Eahab the inactive,' or ' The blusterer that sitteth 
still.' The Authorized Version seems to understand the 
passage to mean, ' Therefore I have constantly warned the 
Jews that their true Egypt, their true security, is quiet 
faith in Jehovah.' 

Isaiah then goes on to show that he does not consider 
this alliance with Egypt as a matter of mere temporal and 
temporary interest ; great principles, laws of universal 
application, are at stake, and their enunciation is worthy 
to be recorded in the most public and the most permanent 
ways ; — on the wooden or brass table, where he that runs 
may read, and in the parchment-roll for future and quiet 
study, ' that it may be for the time to come for ever and 
ever.' He remarks the state of heart which was dic- 
tating their whole policy ; their trust in Egypt abroad, 
and in ' oppression and perverseness ' at home : he tells 
them their whole life is a rebellion and a lie ; and that 
they are carrying this lie to its height, when they call on 
their seers and prophets, the national teachers and 
preachers, to help them in their work, — to tell them no 



PERSECUTION OF THE PROPHETS. 285 



more of the right, but only of the smooth, path : nay, call 
on them to leave the narrow, irksome way themselves, and 
to employ their office and powers in guiding them in that 
pleasant road by which they will escape from the Holy 
One of Israel, and his wearisome claims upon their con- 
sciences. To themselves their condition seems that of a 
strong and high wall, which can resist any violence from 
without ; but the prophet discerns, what they in their 
blindness cannot, that there is a crack beginning within, 
and that this internal pressure of their moral and social 
iniquity will ere long make their wall bulge out and come 
down in overwhelming ruin, in an instant, and when least 
expected. 

The expressions in verses 20 and 21 are among the 
indications I have already noticed, that, in the time at 
which Isaiah spoke, such prophets as remained faithful in 
the general corruption were repressed and silenced by 
persecution. These allusions might at first sight appear a 
reason for referring this prophecy to the reign of Ahaz, 
when the temple was shut up, and the high priest himself 
assisted in new and unlawful rites ; but if we remember 
that the power of the worldly irreligious nobles of that 
period was still unbroken, we shall (as I have also noticed) 
find no difficulty in understanding how much persecution 
of the spiritual teachers would be still carried on in spite 
of Hezekiah ; and Isaiah's encouraging tone as to the 
spiritual aspect of things, in contrast with the temporal 
afflictions he foretells, shows that he saw signs (and if he 
saw them, they were there) that the tide was about to 
turn, just as he must have done when he denounced 
Shebna. For we shall have a very unreal notion of the 
Jewish kings and people if we suppose that their national 
character, even in its most spiritual features, changed about 
instantly with a change of the occupant of the throne. It 
takes a generation at least to make any such important 
change, and especially in so tough and independent a race 
as the Jews always were. And, lastly, it must be noticed 
that the teachers were as much ' removed into a corner' 
by their own corruptness as by persecution. 

Jeremiah describes the idols as plated, or ornamented, 



286 



THE UNSEEN TEACHER. 



with plates of gold and silver, and dressed in garments of 
blue and purple. When Josiah was purging the land 
from idolatry he is said to have 'defiled' the altars and 
high places by burning men's bones on them, by which 
act he at once expressed contempt, and prevented their 
being again employed for the same purpose. But these 
idols of which Isaiah now speaks are the private household 
gods, which a merely national and public reform, like that 
of Hezekiah or Josiah, could never touch. 

Contrasted with these dumb idols on the one hand, and 
on the other with the faithful teachers of the restored and 
converted people, is the still small voice of God himself : 
the word which each man shall hear for himself in the 
inmost recesses of his heart, as of an invisible guide con- 
tinually directing him at every step, that he diverge not 
the least from the straight path. 

The promise in verse 23 probably alludes, as so many 
other passages do, to the way in which the land actually 
lay waste in those days, whether ravaged by the enemy, 
or not cultivated because men had no heart to sow where 
they could not hope to reap : and this picture of peaceful 
husbandry becomes a symbol of the political prosperity 
which should follow the overthrow of the Assyrians ; while 
both — as the connection with verses 20 and 21 shows — j 
are types of the spiritual blessings which the prophet 
knew to be more worthy than either. As the prison-fare, 
the ' bread of adversity and the water of affliction,' were 
the tokens of God's wrath, so this succeeding plenty is of 
his favour, and of his actually feeding their souls with the 
bread of life. Then shall the Spirit, the divine life of 
which the Indwelling Word is the source, be poured out 
like rivers and streams of water, and fertilize the soul as 
they do the hills. To realize the full force of this 
favourite image of the sudden pouring out of rivers, we 
must remember that in southern countries, ravines which 
have been dry for the whole summer are suddenly turned 
into deep rivers. The flood comes down all at once. 

It is the Name, the power, and presence, of Jehovah, 
coming from far, because there was no man at hand to 
help, which shall work the hoped for, and promised, 



ISAIAH XXX. zj— 33 .~HOIF SOLEMNITIES. 287 



deliverance. By a fusion of one image with another, the 
judgments of Jehovah upon the devastators of Israel are 
described as a fierce fire, with its mingled flame and smoke 
heavily ascending ; as the sentence of a king whose word 
is death to the criminal ; as an overwhelming torrent, like 
that to which the Assyrian himself was formerly com- 
pared ;* as a sieve in which the corn shall not be sifted 
from the chaff, but a sheer riddance made of both, while 
both (as the ancient manner was) are exposed to the wind 
— the blast of ' his breath and as a bridle, not to guide 
them aright, but to lead them to their own destruction. 

In contrast with this punishment of the great oppressor, 
stands the joy of the delivered nation : — ' Ye shall have a 
song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept ; and 
gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe, to come 
into the mountain of Jehovah, to the Rock of Israel.' 

All the festivals were kept 'from even to even,' this 
being the Jewish method of reckoning the day, as we see 
in the first chapter of Genesis, where the day is always 
said to begin with the evening. Thus the Sabbath began 
on Friday evening, and lasted till Saturday evening. But 
the passover was in a special manner the ' holy solemnity 
kept in the night,' and from Matthew xxvi. 30, as well as 
from the still existing practice of the Jews, we know that 
a hymn was sung at the end of the supper. These are but 
the more literal signs that Isaiah throughout this passage 
(verses 27 — 33) is connecting the now near prospect of 
their deliverance from the Assyrian, with the old deliver- 
ance which Jehovah wrought for them in the days of 
Moses and Pharaoh. This connection was subsequently 
recognized in the preservation (or it may be origination) 
of the tradition that Sennacherib's army was destroyed on 
the night of the passover : and if we enter into the spirit 
of those magnificent 11th and 12th chapters of Exodus, 
and into the thoughts and hopes which were kept alive in 
the soul of every earnest Hebrew by the sacramental insti- 
tution in which that national deliverance w T as perennially 
recorded, we shall be able to realize something of the 
depth of meaning conveyed by Isaiah to those who heard 

* Chap. viii. 8. 



288 



CHORAL PROCESSIONS. 



him, in the words, ' Ye shall have a song, as in the night 
when a holy solemnity is kept.' But there were other 
festivals which, though not less religious, called for more 
' lightness of heart ' than the passover. A tradition,* 
which is so exact a counterpart of the various passages 
in the Old Testament referring to the same and like sub- 
jects, that its accuracy can hardly be questioned, enables 
us to picture to the life the scene which, in Isaiah's times, 
might have been witnessed all over the country, on the 
eve of the yearly feasts. When the season for presenting 
the first-fruits to Jehovah the King of the nation arrived, 
the country-people assembled themselves in some chief 
village or town of their tribe. The men were required by 
the strict law of Moses to appear three times yearly before 
Jehovah, and they would be accompanied by many of their 
wives and daughters, whether actuated, like Hannah, by 
the desire to offer some vow, or dedicate a first-born son 
in person, or only by the wish to see the great City on an 
occasion when the traders thronged its fairs, and the holi- 
day-makers its feasts, as well as the worshippers its Temple. 
The party thus assembled passed the night before they 
went up to Jerusalem, in the streets, not to contract any 
ceremonial defilement : at daybreak the head man of the 
company, — perhaps the village Levite — awakened them 
with the words, ' Rise, let us go up to Zion, to Jehovah 
our God ;' and they set forward in a choral procession. 
A bull with gilded horns, crowned with olive-leaves, went 
first ; a piper playing on the pipe, the damsels with their 
timbrels, and the bearers of the baskets of wheat and 
grapes and the jars of honey or oil, followed after ; and 
the sacred dance kept time with the voices of the alter- 
nate choirs as they sang, ' I was glad when they said unto 
me, Let us go up into the house of Jehovah.' The simul- 
taneous and silent halt, the prostration in prayer, the burst 
of weeping, which in the present day mark the arrival of a 
party of Jewish pilgrims on the first rising ground which 
commands a view of Jerusalem, is the melancholy shadow 
of the exultation with which their forefathers lifted up 
their eyes to the hills of Zion from the same spots, and 

* Quoted by Vitringa, from the Talmudical Tract Biccurim. 



ISAIAH XXXI. i— 9 . THE REAI DELIVERER. 289 



saw the ' city compact together,' with 'peace within her 
walls and prosperity in her palaces.' The song was fre- 
quently repeated as they drew near the city ; and as their 
' feet stood within its gates ' the people of Jerusalem wel- 
comed them with shouts, and the priests with honour, and 
they proceeded to present their offerings before Jehovah, 
' at the same time reciting the confession in the form pre- 
scribed by Moses.' The Psalms called in our version 
*■ Songs of Degrees," that is, ' of steps,' or ' marches,' are 
all illustrated by this traditional account of the use of 
the one* here quoted ; for all are suitable for various 
occasions of solemn processions to the temple : and other 
Psalms such as lxviii. are easiest understood in like man- 
ner ; while the subject has farther light thrown on it by 
the historical description of the processions composed, not 
of a few villagers, but of the army or of the nation, under 
its nobles, and headed by a David, a Solomon, or a 
Jehoshaphat.t 

And then Isaiah unites these images with those of the 
destruction of the Assyrian by the glorious might of 
J ehovah ; each stroke of the ' rod of doom ' which now 
falls on him who ' smote the nations with a perpetual 
stroke,' is accompanied by a burst of triumphal music ; + 
and he sees the chariots and armies, and the bodies of 
their owners, consumed in a fire kindled by the wrath of 
Jehovah. Tophet was a place in the valley of the sons of 
Hinnom, on the south-east of Jerusalem, where was the 
altar of Moloch, on which children were burnt. There 
seems an ironical allusion to Moloch — the king — in the 
words of Isaiah, ' for the king it is prepared,' and to the 
human sacrifices which should now be represented by a 
slaughter of the Assyrian army ; and also an anticipation 
that the king of Assyria and his army would be actually 
defeated and their bodies burned in these very valleys. § 

Chapter xxxi. If the whole land between Memphis and 

* Psalm cxxii. I do not mean to pronounce peremptorily on the questions 
as to the meaning of this title. 

t 1 Chron. xv. xvi ; 2 Chron. v. vi. vii. ; xx. 27, 28. 

I ' The Boeotians and other neighbours . . . danced to the sound of joyful 
music when the walls [of Peireeus] were demolished.' — Grote's Hist, of Greece, 
ix. 449. 

$ See 2 Kings xxiii. 10 ; Jeremiah Tii. 31, 32 ; xix. 1 ft. 

U 



2 9 o ISAIAH XXXII 1—20. A RIGHTEOUS KING. 



Thebes was filled with the king's stables, and if Thebes 
itself could (as Homer says) send two hundred warriors 
with chariots and horses, out of each of its hundred gates, 
and if the astute politicians at Jerusalem were combining 
with the wise councillors of Egypt to make these forces 
available against the common enemy, yet all this would 
be of no use. Jehovah, too, has his policy and plans 
from which he swerves not, and which he does not carry 
out under the direction of worldly men, nor by their help. 
He will first let the nation learn the vanity of trusting in 
an arm of flesh, and then, when they begin to turn to him 
from whom they have so deeply revolted, he will come to 
save them, as of old. I may notice, with other commen- 
tators, the resemblance of Isaiah's simile of the lion in 
verse 4 to that of Homer, — 

'Qg 8 arch aw/u-aTOQ ovri Xsovr' aWwva 8vvavrai 
YioifikvtQ dypavXoi [xsya Truvaovra 8isa9ar — 

and the allusion in verse 5 to the passover, when the 
prophet, in describing the action of the mother-bird which 
hovers over her nest, uses the word which gave the name 
to that institution. There is a difference of opinion as to 
the proper rendering of the first words of verse 9. Some 
translate ' and his rock shall pass away for terror,' taking 
' rock ' to mean the king, in parallelism to ' princes ; ' 
while others, quoting the Latin proverb, 'fugit ultra 
casam,' explain it to mean that he shall in his panic 
overpass his frontier, or even other, fortresses, to escape 
as far as possible from pursuit. I have retained our 
Authorized Version, which has good authority, and gives 
as good a meaning as any other. 

Chapter xxxii. The deliverance of Judah is to be 
effected, not by Shebna and his supporters at home and 
abroad, but by the right hand of the Lord of the nation : 
its condition, on the side of the nation, is not the diplo- 
macy of those rulers and councillors, but a national and 
personal turning from idols to the true God; and its result 
will be, not the confirmation of the wealth and power of the 
selfish worldly men as they hoped, nor the removal of the 
still existing restraints on their habits of aggrandizing and 
enjoying themselves without regard to God or man, while 



THE CHURL AND THE NOBLE. 



291 



they defied the one and oppressed the other ; — but the 
establishment of righteousness throughout the land, the 
king and his princes ruling in justice and humanity, the 
priests and prophets teaching even the most ignorant to 
' understand knowledge ;' and the whole of society show 
ing that moral reformation which is never more certainly 
indicated than by the right use of those words which 
denote men's moral qualities. We have seen what Thucy- 
dides says on this point ; but we have only to look at 
home to see how we ourselves give all such words as con- 
science, morality, honour, virtue, charity, justice, religion, a 
meaning, base or noble, in exact correspondence with each 
speaker's own moral state. Isaiah's contrast between the 
nobility of birth or rank and that of character has been 
followed, consciously or unconsciously, by Chaucer : — 

' For villainy maketh villain, 
And by his deeds a churl is seen. 

***** 

But understand in thine intent 
That this is not mine intendement, 
To clepen no wight in no age 
Only gentle for his lineage ; 
But whoso that is virtuous, 
And in his port not outrageous ; 
When such one thou see'st thee beforn, 
Though he be not gentle born, 
Thou mayest well see this in soth 
That he is gentle, because he doth 
As 'longeth to a gentleman ; 
Of them none other deem I can ; 
For certainly withouten drede 
A churl is deemed by his deed, 
Of high or low as you may see, 
Or of what kindred that he be.'* 

Men have, more than women, to do with specific move- 
ments and changes in a nation's social life ; but the 
regular, ordinary, ceaseless current of that life is carried 
forward by women : the women whom Isaiah now 
addresses, were at ease in the midst of the imminent in- 
vasion and siege, because the calamity had not yet 
touched them : their vintage had not yet failed ; the 
' careless daughters ' of Jerusalem still found their wonted 
luxuries and enjoyments in the palaces of the crowded 
and joyous city ; and by this carelessness of the future 

* Bomaunt of tlie Hose. 

u 2 



SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. 



while the present was so to their taste, they did but 
reflect, as in a mirror, the like worldly condition of their 
fathers, husbands, brothers. Therefore the prophet warns 
them that a clay of trouble is soon coming, which will 
touch them nearly enough ;— a day of social and domes- 
tic, as well as of political affliction, when those rich and 
luxurious ladies will be seen clad in sackcloth, alike indi- 
cating the poverty into which they have fallen, and the 
grief with which they mourn the various other calamities 
which war, and its attendant famine, have brought into 
their once prosperous homes. But, again, the promise 
follows close on the threatening : these woes may last for 
a long and indefinite time (as the word rendered ' for 
ever ' properly implies) ; but at last ' the spirit will be 
poured on the nation from on high ;' the whole land 
shall be fruitful with righteousness, and with peace the 
effect of righteousness ; and the wife and the mother, no 
longer ' careless,' but having found the blessedness of 
trusting in the true source of peace, shall again know, 
after a better manner than before, what it is to ' dwell in 
a peaceable habitation, and in quiet resting-places.' Yet 
they must expect this blessing in the midst of humilia- 
tions, and on condition of much patient labour ; they 
must be ready to sow — nay, if need be, to reap — the 
seed of repentance, and . faith, and of a new life, while 
the storm is still beating down all their former worldly 
prosperity. 

Ophel — ' the hill ' — was the name of the hill and fort 
at the south point of the ridge on which the temple stood, 
and it is conjectured that the 'watch-tower' may have been 
the ' flock-tower ' mentioned by Micah'" in connection with 
Ophel. The combination of images of desolation and peace 
in these verses resembles that at the end of chapter vii. 

The fact that this prediction of the impending destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem has been handed down to us by Isaiah, 
or his disciples, though they knew that it was not ful- 
filled ; and that they have themselves taken care to assure 
us that it was not fulfilled by any event of their own day ; 
shows clearly that they had little notion that prophecy 

* Micah iv. 8. 



ISAIAH XXXIII i— 19. JEHOVAH ARISES. 293 



was the literal prediction of such events, and still less 
that such literal coincidence between prediction and event, 
was the test of the speaker's words being a true message 
from God. At the same time the distinct manner in 
which Isaiah, like his contemporary Micah in the passage 
just referred to, pictures the utter ruin of Jerusalem itself, 
is noticeable for the light it throws on the question 
whether other descriptions of Jerusalem in ruins can 
have been conceived and written by Isaiah. 

Chapter xxxiii. As the conclusion to this series of 
woes against the various classes whose sins had brought 
the Assyrian invasion upon the country as God's appro- 
priate instrument of punishment, succeeds the prophet's 
triumphant denunciation of still fuller woe upon the great 
spoiler himself. He has reached the very climax of his 
power, and no longer conceals his ultimate designs against 
Judah : and the baffled ambassadors of Hezekiatf* return 
to their master to report with weeping, that Sennacherib 
indeed had taken the tribute and presents with which 
they hoped to purchase his departure, but was not the 
less actively pressing the siege of the fortresses in the 
south of Judah, which were falling one after another into 
his hands ; that his hordes of barbarian cavalry were 
sweeping the whole country, so that it was no longer 
possible for the peasant to work in the fields, nor for the 
traveller to pass along the high roads ;t and that it was 
now his avowed intention to carry out the complete policy 
of Assyrian conquest, by transporting the native inhabi- 
tants to some other country, which had suffered the like 
subjugation, and of which its natives would in turn supply 
their place. 

This, says the prophet, is the very crisis for which Ave 

* 2 Kings xviii. 13 — 16. This passage does not occur in the otherwise 
corresponding account in Isaiah xxxvi. ; but the verse now before us seems to 
allude to this treacherous proceeding of Sennacherib. 

t ' The villages and the Arab tribes had not suffered less than the towns- 
people. The pasha was accustomed to give instructions to those who were 
sent to collect money, in three words, ' Gro, destroy, eat '■ (pillage) ; and his 
agents were not generally backward in entering into the spirit of them. The 
tribes who had been attacked and plundered, were retaliating upon caravans 
and travellers, or laying waste the cultivated parts of the pashalic. The 
villages were deserted, and the roads were little frequented and very insecure.' 
— Layard's Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i. ch. 2. 



294 



THE ENEMY DISAPPEARS. 



nad to wait, morning after morning : the Egyptian alliance, 
the diplomacy of Shebna, the humiliation and submission 
of Hezekiah, have alike proved in vain : all hope of help 
from man is past, and therefore God's time is come ; the 
Lokd of the nation must, and will, keep his covenant now, 
which he made with Abraham and his seed for a thousand 
generations : — 1 Now will I rise, saith Jehovah : now will I 
be exalted ; now will I lift up myself ; ' — and so signal 
will be the manifestation of God's power and presence in 
the destruction of this enemy, that even the sinners and 
the hypocrites in Zion will be conscience-stricken by it, 
and be made to know in their hearts, that to fall into the 
hands of the living and holy Jehovah is more to be dreaded 
than to come under the power of Sennacherib ; but the 
righteous, on the other hand, will feel and know that he 
can dwell with the devouring fire, for it is a fire of love, 
and not of wrath, to him ; and to him, relying wholly on 
that love, and living according to its law, the deliverance 
from Sennacherib will be the symbol of his spiritual 
security. In the day of trouble he has a high and strong 
fortress, which no enemy can scale, and where neither 
bread nor water will fail ; and the day of deliverance will 
soon follow, to restore him to the light of God's counte- 
nance, and the blessings of his kingdom, — -just as the 
inhabitants of Jerusalem would, when the siege was raised, 
see their king Hezekiah again in the robes of state which 
he had now laid aside for sackcloth or armour, or recovered 
from the sickness which had perhaps already attacked 
him ; and would be able to go abroad at will into the 
distant country from which they were now shut up within 
the walls and closed gates of Jerusalem."* Then they will 
look back on the past terror, when they were called on to 
pay the tribute-money, which was, if possible, to buy off the 
foreigners whose harsh and unintelligible tongue was heard 
reckoning its amount and weighing it out, or counting the 

* Grotius quotes — 

' Ergo omnis longo solvit se Teucria luctu ; 
Panduntur portae ; juvat ire, et Dorica castra 
Desertosque videre locos, littusque relictum. 
Hie Dolopum maims, hie sgevus tendebat Achilles.' 

B Virg. JEn. ii. 26. 



ISAIAH XXXIII. 20- 24. THE LAND IS FREE. 295 



towers which still stood between them and their boot} 7- ; — 
as when Rab-shakeh appeared under the walls, and sum- 
moned them to surrender. To the present confusion in 
which the land is involved, shall succeed, not only peace, 
but a restoration of their national unity. Of this the 
national festivals were the symbols, because they brought 
the several tribes together from all parts of the kingdom, 
and based these occasions of meeting for pleasure or 
business upon a united national worship, which recognized 
the Loed of each man and tribe as the Founder and Head 
of the Commonwealth ; as the Lawgiver and the Judge ; 
and as the King, in the Majesty of whose person the legis- 
lative and executive, the civil and ecclesiastical functions 
met, as in something greater than any. Only in the 
Divine King, and not in any one of his earthly and finite 
representatives, could this union of all characters in a single 
person be fitly made. 

Among the images which crowd the concluding verses of 
this chapter, we may perhaps, without fancifulness, distin- 
guish an under-current of thoughts suggested by the circum- 
stances of the times at which this prophecy was delivered ; 
the promised ' quiet ' seems to point to the existing com- 
motion ; the ' tabernacle which shall not be taken down,' 
reminds us, not only of the fast-founded temple which had 
replaced the tabernacle, and become the fixed centre of 
their ' solemnities,' but also of the tents of Sennacherib's 
hosts now blackening"" the valleys round Jerusalem, but 
soon to be swept away 'like the thistle-down before the whirl- 
wind ; ' the ' broad rivers and streams ' suggest the thought 
that though Hezekiah's precautions would have secured 
the absolute necessary supply of water for the beleaguered 
city, they felt the want of that abundance of it which is 
still more grateful in an Eastern climate than in our own : 
while the promise that ' the inhabitant should no longer 
say, I am sick,' favours the conjecture that the illness of 
Hezekiah may have been one instance of the disease which 
usually attends on the confinement and discomforts of a 
city shut up against an enemy in the field. In verse 21 

* Then, as now, made of black camels' or goats' hair. See the accounts of 
modern travellers ; and Canticles i. 5. 



296 



ISAIAH XXXIV. 1 — 17. ED OH I. 



there is a contrast between the chief cities of Egypt and 
Assyria with their great rivers, and Jerusalem to which 
Jehovah is the river of life, like that in chapter viii. 6, 7 : 
and the ' gallant ship ' which cannot reach Jerusalem is the 
same Assyrian power which in verse 23 is described under 
the same image as run ashore, and so at the mercy even 
of the lame. In verse 24 we may notice with the more 
religious commentators the evangelical prophet's anticipa- 
tion of Him who saith to the sick man, ' Son, be of good 
cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee.' 

Chapters xxxiv. xxxv. In 2 Chronicles xxviii. 16, 17, 
we read that in the reign of Ahaz, ' the Edomites smote 
Judah and carried away captives,' and that this was one of 
the motives for the fatal application to Assyria for pro- 
tection. This inroad was, no doubt, like that of the 
Philistines, a revolt against the authority which in the 
reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, as of the other stronger 
kings, kept this half-civilized race in a tributary state ; 
and we hardly needed to find ' Huduma,'* like Ash clod and 
Beth-Ammon, among the list of the countries whose kings, 
according to Sennacherib's annals (already referred to) 
brought him ' their accustomed tribute,' after his conquest 
of Phoenicia, to authorize our extending to Edom the sup- 
position that it, as well as Philistia and Moab, suffered 
more or less at this period from the Assyrians, and sub- 
mitted again to dependence on Judah, when Hezekiah's 
power was re-established after the overthrow of Senna- 
cherib. Still I think most readers will feel that to refer 
this prophecy (as Grotius and some others do) to such a 
series of events, is not satisfactory : and that it was a just 
consciousness of the inadequacy of this interpretation 
which led Cyril and Theodoret to explain it of the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem and the Jewish commonwealth ; the 
rabbis to believe that it predicted the downfall of Christian, 
the Protestants, that of Papal, Rome ; and other commen- 
tators to find in it threatenings of the general destruction 
of the enemies of the Church, of the overthrow of anti- 
Christ, or even of some anti-Christian power hereafter to 
rise up in ancient Idumea.t All indicate a sense of the 

* tS^.e above, p. 242. f Alexander, on the passage. 



EDOM PUT FOR ASSYRIA. 297 



gravity of the prophecy, beyond what the name of Edom 
can sustain : and — while the greater part of what is true 
in the feeling is brought into its proper light by the re- 
cognition that the prophet is the enunciator of universal 
laws which his contemporaries were to apply to the events 
of their own day, and the following generations to read 
more clearly by help of the illustration which those events 
had afforded, — I believe the question, What, then, was 
the specific event to which the chapters before us allude ? 
is most simply and most satisfactorily answered by saying, 
that it is the overthrow of the poAver of Sennacherib, and 
that this occurred just before, or just after, the utterance of 
the prophecy. The use of Edom as a mystical name for 
the Assyrian domination is in accordance with the other 
instances of the kind which I have referred to on chap. xxv. 
10, and throws light on them, as they do on it ; the general 
resemblance of this prophecy to that of chapters xiii. xiv.; 
its promises expressed under the image of ransomed 
captives returning through the deserts which separate 
Judea from Babylonia ; and its place in the book ; all point 
to this, as Isaiah's own meaning. If it were necessary to 
find a reason for his selection of this particular type, we 
might do so in the connection between the image of the 
great sacrifice and the thought of the countless flocks of 
Edom. 

The Day of Judgment, in which Jehovah gives his 
decision in the long-pending controversy between Zion the 
Kingdom of Righteousness, and Assyria the Kingdom of 
Force, is come : and the Judge of all the earth summons 
the nations to hear his sentence. It is against the king 
of mere power, and against the nations themselves, in as 
far as they have taken mere power to be their law and 
their god, and are serving in its armies. It is a sentence of 
death, of extermination of the enemies of God and man, 
who are to be made a sin-offering to God's justice, that so 
righteousness may be re-established in the world. Their 
land shall be soaked with blood : the fire and smoke of 
that altar shall be like the fire and smoke of Sodom and 
Gomorrah : the walls of its cities shall be levelled by 
the ' line of desolation and the plummet of emptiness : ' to 



298 ISAIAH XXXV. i — 10. THE RECOMPENSE. 



its hereditary nobles shall succeed families of wild beasts 
and birds, which shall enter into regular possession, genera- 
tion after generation, and hold their courts in the desolate 
palaces : Jehovah himself parcels out the land among these 
invaders, and registers the inheritance of each family (as 
Joshua did for the children of Israel'";, in order that each 
may be secured in it for ever. I have adopted the ' Satyr' 
and the ' Night-spectre ' in my version, though it cannot 
be said with certainty that these monsters of popular belief, 
and not the goat and the owl, are intended. Lilith — ' the 
Nocturnal ' — was believed by the Jews to have been a 
wife of Adam who became a demon, and, in the form of a 
beautiful woman, murdered children. But it is not known 
whether this belief was so old as the time of Isaiah.t 

And then follows the 'recompense ' of Judah, whose con- 
dition the prophet implies, though he beautifully abstains 
from asserting in detail, to have been much that which is 
now coming on her enemies. The contrast between Edom 
wholly possessed by wild animals, and Judah with its 
human inhabitants restored to their national and religious 
privileges, is very poetical. In the last chapter every thing 
was ferine — patriarchs, inheritances, palaces, genealogies : 
in this (xxxv.), even the earth is human — breaks into 
shouts of joy, while the forests and fields assist in the 
triumphal return of the Divine King at the head of his 
people. The reader will judge, according to his own taste 
and feeling of the laws of poetic imagination, whether these 
images only present a picture of the general and complete 
change from desolation to prosperity : or whether he will 
say, with Yitringa, that ' the glory of Lebanon,' which con- 
sisted in its cedars and other great trees, points to faithful 
teachers, pastors, and princes ; while ' the excellency of 
Carmel ' with its fruit-bearing slopes, and of Sharon with 
the numerous flocks and herds which fed in its pleasant 
pastures of grass and flowers, represent the people of the 
Church and nation. In the prospect of this deliverance, 
the hands now falling from the attitude of prayer or of 
action, the knees now tottering for lack of firm faith and 



* Joshua xviii. 8—10. 

f See G-esenius and Cheyne on this passage. 



THE HIGHWAY IN THE DESERT. 



299 



hope, and the hearts now flurried and impatient from fear, 
may regain strength ; J ehovah himself is coming to save, 
and in that day the blind and deaf will see and hear, and 
the lame and dumb will not only recover their powers, but 
use them with delight. The mirage — the Hebrew word is 
that still used by the Arabs — shall become a real lake ; 
and springs shall break out in the dry, sandy desert, — yet 
not merely to serve the purpose of providing the jackals 
with marshy haunts, but in order to supply men and 
women — the returning captives — with water on their 
road. * 

I have already pointed outt the evidence that there 
was a real and great deportation of the people of Judah 
during the times of Isaiah ; and to this the promise of 
their return in the verses before us, is exactly applicable ; 
at the same time the prophet here, as elsewhere, connects 
the restoration from Assyrian captivity with the spiritual 
regeneration of the restored remnant out of the national 
worldliness and irreligion and depravit}^ of which he had 
declared that captivity to be the punishment. 

The desert is naturally pathless as well as barren ; but 
in the day of this universal regeneration, the faint track 
through the sands shall be replaced by a solid, embanked 
causeway, which shall not only be there, but be actually 
used ; as seems to be meant by the words, ' A highway 
shall be there, and a way.' Highways are among the 
characteristic features of civilization in a country, since 
they are the means of regular and easy communication 
between the opposite parts, and especially of all with the 
capital : but in times of foreign invasion they fall first into 
the power of the enemy, and are most completely deserted 
by the inhabitants — 'the highways are unoccupied, and the 
travellers walk through by-ways :'+ and in Judea, or any 
other country where wild beasts still exist, these keep aloof 
from the roads as long as they are kept open by traffic, but 
re-appear in them if unfrequented, as in the story of the 
old prophet who met the lion on the way from Bethel. 

* See Mr. Layard's curious account of the Mesopotamian marshes. — 
Nineveh and Babylon, chap. xxiv. 
f Pages 147, 242. 

% Judges v. 6. Compare the note at p. 293 ahove. 



300 



THE RETURN TO ZION. 



And this high road shall not only be so well marked and 
made, that the most ignorant and inexperienced shall 
keep his way there without difficulty, but neither shall it 
be appropriated by the unclean heathens, nor stopped by 
any roaring lion, — any Sennacherib, or spiritual archetype 
of Sennacherib. It shall be called, for it shall really be, 
' the holy way/ the road set apart for the use of Jehovah's 
own chosen and consecrated people, whom he has redeemed 
and brought back from bondage : it shall be entirely for 
those. And here again the reader may choose whether he 
will, with Vitringa and others, explain this way — ' the old 
path, the good way in which ye shall find rest for your 
souls,''" — to be the 1 canon of faith and practice,' em- 
bodied in the creeds, sacraments, and other formularies 
and symbols, as the ways, the methods, by which we go 
forward to perfection, going up to the city and presence 
of God, and to communion with him ; or whether he will 
say, less definitely, but not less forcibly, with Gill,t that 
it is 'a way cast up by sovereign grace, which is raised 
above the mire and dirt of sin, and carries over it and from 
it.' I should myself say that trie germs — only to be 
developed through long subsequent ages — of these ideas 
of Christian theology, may be found in the words in which 
Isaiah speaks of this restoration of his countrymen and con- 
temporaries from bondage. — ' And the ransomed of J ehovah 
shall return, and shall come to Zion with songs, and ever- 
lasting joy upon their heads.' — Of the wonted processions 
in which kings, village communities, and private persons, 
went up to the temple at the great feasts, or on other 
occasions of national or personal thanksgiving after a har- 
vest or a victory, a sickness or a return from captivity, I 
have lately spoken. So I have of that habit of poets, and 
of none more than Isaiah, of preferring manifold to single 
images, which may here authorize us to take all,+ rather 
than any one, of the commentators' explanations of the 
phrase ' everlasting joy upon their heads.' Allusions to 
the crowns of the king, the priest, and the bridegroom,? 

* Jeremiah vi. 16. f Quoted by Alexander. 

% Except, indeed, that of Forerius given by Alexander. 
§ Canticles iii. 11. 



THIS PROPHECY BY ISAIAH. 



301 



and at the same time to the practice of anointing their 
heads, and the heads of persons on other festive occasions, 
with oil,* are quite compatible with the thought that the 
]oy expresses itself in the countenance, or even that it is 
figured as a radiance of glory about the heads of the 
redeemed ones. 

The more than usually trivial arguments against the 
genuineness of these two chapters, would hardly deserve 
even the passing notice which I here give them, if there 
had been no motive for the criticism, and no subsequent 
use to be made of its conclusions. But the reader must 
keep his eyes open to the fact, that if he here consents to 
abandon positive for conjectural criticism he will inevitably 
prejudge, and without the evidence, the coming question 
of the authorship of the last twenty-six chapters of this 
Book. Positive criticism, such as he would certainly 
apply to any other book but the Bible, will tell him that 
there is no ground for doubting that the prophecy before 
us is by Isaiah ; nor for perplexing himself with such 
hypotheses of the speculative criticism as that these two 
chapters do not make one whole ; that their style is 
diffuse and verbose ; that they are full of extravagant 
expressions of revengeful malice ; that they are the work 
of a writer long after the times of Isaiah ; and composed 
by him as a sort of summary of chapters xl. to lxvi., 
which, are to be ascribed to another unknown author. 
Let the true student examine the case thoroughly for 
himself. 

* Compare Psalm xlv. 7 ; Eccl. ix. 8; Isaiali lxi. 3. 



CHAPTER XX. „ 



ISAIAH XXXVI., XXXVII. HISTORICAL EVENTS OF SENNACHERIB' S INVASION AND 

RETREAT — HIS LETTER — HOW ANSWERED. — UNCONSCIOUS GENIUS IN THE 

NARRATIVE. — RAB-SHAKEh's THEOLOGY. ISAIAH'S INSPIRATION. — 'THE 

INCARNATE WRATH OF GOD.' — ZIOn's DEFIANCE. THE 'SIGN' OF THE 

SPONTANEOUS CROPS. — THE DESTROYING ANGEL. — SETHOS DELIVERED BY 
VULCAN. — GERMAN WAR OF FREEDOM. — HISTORY TEACHES A BELIEF IN 
PROVIDENCE. NIEBUHR. — GROTE. 

f THERE has been much discussion as to whether the 
historical narrative in the following chapters, or its 
slightly varying counterpart in the 2nd Book of Kings, is 
the original ; or whether both are taken from some third 
work now lost, and which may also have supplied the 
materials for the different account of the same events in 
the 2nd Book of Chronicles ; and what was the share of 
Isaiah himself in the actual or supposed narratives. We 
are told'' 5 " that he wrote a complete history of the reign of 
Uzziah ; and if he wrote that of Hezekiah also, it would 
be quite intelligible that the main part of this should, on 
the one hand, be incorporated into the Book of Kings, and 
on the other, into this book of his own prophecies, with 
such omissions and amplifications as the purposes of each 
required. The opinion that this was done in the latter 
case by some compiler and editor of the prophet's writings, 
has its advocates : but I persuade myself that, in propor- 
tion to the reader's study of the book as a whole, and as 
we have it, he has seen indications of a unity of design in 
the arrangement of the several prophecies, and of the 
various pieces of narrative connecting them ; and has con- 
sequently found that arrangement so interesting and 
important, for the light it throws on each part, and for 
the epic character it gives to the whole, as to be worthy 

* 2 Chron. xxvi. 22. 



ISA I A H XXX VI. , XXX VII. HISTORICAL EVENTS. 303 



of Isaiah himself, and perhaps above the reach of any of 
his successors of whom we know anything. 

It may here be convenient to bring together the succes- 
sive parts of the history of this period which I have already 
referred to in connection with the successive discourses of 
Isaiah, and to complete them with what still remains to be 
said of the events now taking place ; and of which the 
Hebrew narratives, that of Herodotus, and the Assyrian 
inscriptions, are the remaining records.'" Sargon, like his 
predecessors Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser, had broken 
up the confederacy of the Western and Southern powers, 
and reduced them to submission. But his assassinationt 
would have given them the opportunity to revolt ; and 
after his son Sennacherib had reduced like revolts nearer 
home he proceeded, in his third campaign, to Syria, where 
Phoenicia, Philistia, and Judah, if not other neighbouring 
nations, had thrown off the Assyrian yoke, and had entered 
again into alliance with Egypt and Ethiopia against the 
common foe. But the Egyptians and Ethiopians, as 
usual, were too slow for the rapid action of the Assyrians. 
Eluloeus, King of Tyre and Sidon, fled to Cyprus at the 
approach of Sennacherib, and all the cities of Phoenicia 
submitted to him. He made Ithobal king in Eluloeus' s 
stead, and there received homage and tribute from him 
as well as from the kings of Arvad, Ashdod, Ammon, 
Moab, Edom, and others, who had apparently been too 
prudent to join in the revolt. The kings of Ascalon and 
Ekron, who were perhaps actually appointed by the As- 
syrian king,J would have remained faithful, as the king of 
Ashdod seems to have done ; but the nobles and people 
were not so disposed. At Ascalon they seem to have 
substituted Zidka for their former king Sar-ludari, and at 
Ekron they put their king Padi in irons and sent him 
prisoner to Hezekiah, who like them was in revolt, and 
relying on the Egyptian and Ethiopian alliance for support. 
But these allies still delayed, while Sennacherib advanced. 

* Herodotus ii. 141 ; 2 Kings xviii., xix. ; 2 Chron. xxxii. ; Isaiah xxxvi., 
xxxvii. ■ The Inscriptions are given above, pp. 194, 239. 
f Schrader, Keilinschriften u. d. A.T., pp. 268, 331. 
+ Sar-ludari is an Assyrian name. Schrader, Keilinschriften, p. 73. 



3°4 



SENNACHERIB AT LACHISH. 



He took all the cities of Zidka — Beth-Dagon, J oppa, Bene- 
barak, and Azur — by storm, sent him and all his house 
prisoners to Assyria, and put Sar-ludari again on the 
throne. He took Ekron, punished its rebellion with 
severity, and brought back king Padi, whom he had com- 
pelled Hezekiah to give up to him. And, when the 
fortified cities of Judah fell, one after another, and the 
open country was ravaged by the Assyrian armies, and 
still no help came from Egypt, and Sennacherib was lying 
before the great southern fortress of Lachish* which ought 
to have covered the allied armies, had they arrived in 
time, — then Hezekiah, too, found himself obliged to yield ; 
and he sent to the great king, ' saying, I have offended, 
return from me, that which thou puttest upon me I will 
bear and he paid the tribute thereupon required by 
Sennacherib, stripping the temple and his palace of their 
treasures to do so. Sennacherib took the gold and silver, 
but immediately afterwards sent an army to Jerusalem to 
demand its surrender, with the avowed purpose of deport- 
ing the inhabitants as soon as possible. Isaiah reproaches 
him t with his treachery, and his breach of a treaty which 
must have promised a cessation of hostilities on Hezekiah's 
submission and payment of the tribute : but the kings of 
Egypt and Ethiopia were at last advancing, and Senna- 
cherib must have felt that he had strong motives for 
securing himself against the possibility of a flank attack 

* Lachish, and Libnah (which Sennacherib besieged after taking Lachish) 
were Canaanite cities in the south of Judah, the kings of which were con- 
quered by Joshua. Lachish was fortified by Eehoboam, and was one of the 
remaining fortresses of Judah in the time of Jeremiah. It has been con- 
jectured that the royal chariots and horses were kept there. Libnah is 
mentioned as having revolted from Joram. (Joshua x. 3 ff. ; xii. 11, 15 ; xv. 
39, 42; 2 Kings viii. 22; xiv. 19; xviii. 17; 2 Chron. xi. 9; xxv. 27; 
xxxii 9 ; Nehemiah xi . 30 ; Jeremiah xxxiv. 7 ; Micah i. 13.) Eusebius and 
Jerome place both these cities near Eleutheropolis. The modern Um-Lakis 
preserves the name, if not the site of the ancient Lachish. 

Mr. George Smith says, in his account of this campaign of Sennacherib, 
1 He captured forty-six of the fenced cities of Judah, including Lachish, and 
there is a series of slabs from the wall of one of the halls of his palace, on 
which is depicted the storming of this city, while Sennacherib is represented 
sitting on a throne in the vicinity of Lachish, and receiving the prisoners and 
spoil.' Notices of Palestine, in Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 
October, 1872. Mr. Layard gives a woodcut of this representation, Nineveh 
and Babylon (1853), p. 150. And Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Article 
Lachish, gives copies of some other parts of these slabs, from Layaid's Monu- 
ments of Nineveh, 2nd series, plate 21. 

f Chapter xxxiii. 1, 7, 8. 



RABSHAKEH AT JERUSALEM. 



from Jerusalem while he was giving battle, or perhaps a 
series of battles, to the armies now coming up from the 
south : he would not trust Hezekiah's recent and reluctant 
submission, nor would he have much scruple about break- 
ing his own engagements with one whom he may have 
suspected to be still in communication with the late allies 
of Juclah, and his own immediate enemies. 

A detachment from the main army appeared under the 
walls of J erusalem, commanded by the Tartan, or Assyrian 
General, together with the Chief of the Eunuchs, and the 
Chief Cup-bearer, who may have been civil officers of 
Sennacherib, and sent by him to conduct the negotiations."* 
If Shebna had been still in power, he might perhaps have 
yielded ; but Eliakim, whose policy was that of Isaiah — 
the j)olicy of absolute reliance upon Jehovah — was now 
first in Hezekiah's councils ; and, by the advice of Isaiah, 
the reply was a defiance of the king and his army, in the 
name of Jehovah. Sennacherib, meanwhile, had taken 
Lachish, and was besieging the neighbouring city of Lib- 
nah, when Kabshakeh re-joined him there, to report the 
failure of his mission. Tirhakeh, king of Ethiopia, with 
his Egyptian allies or vassals, was now at hand ; and before 
the battle Sennacherib again sent a summons to Hezekiah, 
by a letter in which he again warned him of the conse- 
quences of trusting either in Egypt and Ethiopia, or in his 
God. He then took up his position at Altakeh, probably 
a few miles north of Lachish, and there gave battle to 
Tirhakeh and his great army, with its Egyptian chariots, 
cavalry, and bowmen. He was, according to his own 
account, victorious, taking many prisoners. But his army 
now met with a reverse to which he indeed — as might be 
expected — makes no allusion, but the fact of which has 
been recorded both in the Egyptian account preserved" by 
Herodotus, and in those of the Hebrew historians. We 

* Tartan, Rabsaris, and Rab-shakeh, are considered by the most recent 
authorities to be not proper names but official titles — the Commander-in- 
chief, the Chief of the eunuchs, and the Chief cup-bearer. Tartan is Assyrian, 
the other two Hebrew. Dr. Schrader suggests that Rabsaris may be the 
Hebrew equivalent for the Assyrian Kab-lub, Chief of the harem, a title found 
in the Official Lists, and Rabshakeh a Hebrew substitute for Rab-sak, which 
would mean not Chief cup-bearer, but Chief of the military staff. — Keilin- 
schriften, u. cl. A. T. p. 198. 

X 



3 o6 BATTLE WITH THE EGYPTIANS. 



are left in doubt as to the exact nature of the disaster, * 
or the place of its occurrence. Sennacherib may have 
threatened Pelusium, as well as Jerusalem, as his letter to 
Hezekiah shows that it was his intention to invade Egypt : 
but, as he makes no reference in his annals to any such 
advance after the battle he records, it is perhaps more 
probable that the disaster occurred in the plains of Philistia, 
and that there may be confusion on this point, as well as 
on that of the cause of the disaster itself, in the account 
preserved by Herodotus. Sennacherib, indeed, instead of 
recording any reverse, makes the conquest of Ekron and 
the submission of Hezekiah as the consequences — and the 
triumphant and adequate consequences — of his victory 
over the Egyptians and Ethiopians, and winds up the 
account of this his third campaign with the detail of the 
spoils which Hezekiah had been compelled to surrender to 
him. As he took all the cities of Judah except Jerusalem, 
and overran the whole land, he may have obtained all the 
plunder he recites : but if so, it was probably plunder, and 
not tribute. The tribute is more likely to have been the 
specified amount of talents of gold and silver (whether the 
latter was three or eight hundred is not important), and 
to have been paid under the circumstances, and at the 
time, stated in the Hebrew accounts. If the events had 
occurred in the order given in Sennacherib's Inscriptions, 
and had been as successful as he desires to imply, he 
would not have left Hezekiah in possession of his kingdom, 
nor would he have failed to carry out his purpose of 
invading Egypt. Instead of this, he does not appear to 
have attempted any farther interference with Egypt or the 
Western nations during the rest of his reign. It is simpler 
and easier to reconcile the conflicting points of the Hebrew 
and Egyptian with the Assyrian accounts, by assuming 
some such designed exaggeration and distortion of the facts 
in Sennacherib's boastful inscription, than by the supposi- 
tion of two distinct campaigns, one of which is unrecorded 
by the Hebrew, and the other by the Assyrian, historian.! 

* See Knobel on the passage, which he discusses with his usual precision, 
f Mr. George Smith (in the Notices of Palestine quoted in the note to page 
304) says of Sennacherib — 4 late in his reign, probably about b.c. 688, he made 



SUDDEN RETREAT. 



307 



In this, as in all histories, modern no less than ancient, 
details remain obscure and doubtful. We may not be 
able to say whether Rab-shakeh withdrew the troops 
which had accompanied him to Jerusalem, when he him- 
self returned to Sennacherib's head-quarters ; or whether 
— because he was only an ambassador, and Tartan the 
general, or for any other reason — they were left behind to 
begin the siege : whether it was the destruction of this 
detached army, by plague already begun within the walls 
of Jerusalem, or by some more sudden disaster ; or 
whether it was some more general catastrophe, that com- 
pelled Sennacherib to fly to his own land : nor decide 
other like questions, for and against which much has been, 
and may be, said. But the careful examination of the 
alternatives (for which I refer the reader to- the commen- 
tators themselves) enables us to get all the general light 
we require for a distinct view of the great political features 
of the period : though this examination will show us that 
there are dark patches of shadow, or undefined marks, 
where we had hoped to make out specific forms on a 
nearer approach, still we find that, on again retiring to the 
right point of distance for seeing the whole as the picture 
it is, and is meant to be, it tells its story quite well ; and 
that we may learn from it all we need to know. A\ 7 e see 
that in the regular advance of the Assyrian power, it had 
reached the point at which Sennacherib could cease to 
temporize with Judah, and might proceed completely to 
absorb the tributary state into the empire. The kingdom 
of Samaria had already followed the fate of Damascus in 
this respect : the submission of Phoenicia and Philistia had 
not only opened the road to Egypt, but also turned the 

another' expedition to Palestine.' This is inferred from an Inscription of 
Ezar-haddon, who says that his father Sennacherib formerly conquered the 
city of Adumu of the Arabs, of which Hazailu was king ; while Sennacherib 
himself names Melikram as the king of Edom who submitted to hirn in his 
third campaign. But this would be no proof of a later campaign, even if 
Adumu means Edom, which Dr. Schrader denies. Professor Finzi assumes 
that there was such a second expedition, but adds, that hitherto the inscrip- 
tions have only borne testimony to the first war ; and Dr. Schrader says, with 
a direct reference to Mr. Smith's supposition, that nothing is found in the 
Assyrian accounts of any second campaign in Syria ; and that the assumed 
historical necessity for such a campaign rests on a misconception of the 
right mode of reconciling the several statements. — Keilinschriften, u. d. A. T. 
pp. 192, ff. 

x 2 



3 o8 



SENNACHERIB'S LETTER. 



position of Judah : and if Sennacherib thought it well to 
try and intimidate Hezekiah and his people into surren- 
dering a city which even he would have had difficulty in 
taking until they were starved out, we may infer from the 
insolent way in which he still avows his ultimate intentions 
if they did surrender, that he really had no fear for the 
result, even though he should be obliged to fight Tirhakeh, 
with Judah unconquered and assisting the Egyptians. The 
justness of the belief, which (as we learn from Herodotus) 
was held by the Egyptians as well as by the Hebrews, that 
nothing but an interposition of God's hand could at this 
moment have broken the great Assyrian power, is confirmed 
by this conduct of Sennacherib and his messenger no less 
than by the despair of help from human counsels or arms 
which Hezekiah manifests on receiving the report of the 
message, and the letter by which it was afterwards followed. 
There is some truth in the observation, though it may have 
been made scoffingly, that Hezekiah' s character on the pre- 
sent occasion resembles that of David in its devotion more 
than in its energy ; for the powers of the Hebrew monarchy, 
and its reigning king, were too feeble to resist that incar- 
nation of universal despotism, if they could not obtain a 
form and degree of support which David did not need for 
the assertion of the independence and superiority of his 
kingdom, among the surrounding nations. It was true, as 
Sennacherib boasted, that a power had arisen against which 
nation after nation had found its faith, and institutions, 
and arms, unable to make any head : and if the utter 
destruction which had come upon Ephraim, no less than 
upon the peoples and kings whose names the Assyrian 
recites in his letter, exactly in the fashion in which he 
recited and we now read them on the obelisks or bulls at 
Nineveh, was not to fall now on Judah also, it must be by 
the help of a stronger hand than had interfered for any of 
them. The conviction that the Lord of Israel was strong 
enough, and no less willing, to keep his covenant by 
defending the nation against all its enemies, had no doubt 
supported Hezekiah hitherto : but it would have been 
insufficient, in this moment, to meet the terrible feeling 
that he was now in the actual presence and power of the 



HEZEKIAH' S PRAYER. 



3°9 



representative of irresistible arbitrary force, unless a higher 
truth had come to sustain this lower one, and he had 
realized (as men only do realize in some extremity of their 
own helplessness) that there was an Absolute Will retaining 
the mastery over that irresistible force, however crushing 
it might seem ; and that the Lord of Israel who ' dwelt 
between the cherubims,' was himself the God, the only 
God, of all the kingdoms of the earth, and so of this 
Assyrian kingdom among the rest. And then we see how 
this truth, which the pious Hezekiah had known and 
acknowledged before, but which now came to him with all 
the reality of life and death, begets a likeness to itself in 
the mind which it informs ; for just as the idea of, and 
faith in, the Lord of the nation, expands into, yet remains 
a living part of, the higher consciousness that he is the 
Lord who made and still rules the heavens and earth, so 
Hezekiah' s patriotic interest in, and prayer for, the preser- 
vation of his own people, expands itself into a desire for 
the honour of God, as its ultimate object : ' Now, there- 
fore, 0 Jehovah our God, save us from his hand, that all 
the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the 
Lord, even Thou only.' 

We are so familiar from childhood with these Scripture 
narratives, and they are so unpretending in their form, 
that it is usually only after some distinct effort of examina- 
tion by help of commentaries or lexicons, that we notice 
(as we do then notice) the marks which they abound with, 
of unconscious genius in the selection of the really charac- 
teristic points of the story. The short peremptory letter 
of Sennacherib, not only brings out the acts of Hezekiah 
which we have just been considering, but also the more 
vulgar insolence of Rab-shakeh, who will not give Hezekiah 
the title of king at all, while he rings the changes upon 
' my master, the great king, the king of Assyria.' And 
again the address of Rab-shakeh to Eliakim and his fellow- 
ministers, is artfully differenced from that in which, in 
defiance of their request, he appeals to the men on the 
wall : with the latter he makes the surrender a question of 
mere selfish consideration, how to escape the famine which 
is likely to accompany the siege, and to have plenty to eat 



3 io ASSASSINATION OF SENNACHERIB 

and drink thereafter ; while to the ministers of state he 
urges their utter want of power to resist, and, moreover, 
condescends to argue (on their own ground, as he supposes) 
the theological question, whether Hezekiah can hope for 
the support of a God whose altars he has taken away,"* 
with a patronizing scepticism which singularly resembles the 
style in which the sceptic in our own day often undertakes 
to enlighten some one who has spent years in the study 
and practice of the Christian creed and life, as to the 
consequences of his own belief, — wholly unconscious that 
his talk is as much beside the mark as if he were to set 
right a Newton or a Laplace, though himself unacquainted 
with the first elements of physical science. The theology 
and the politics of both Rab-shakeh's speeches, and his 
inability to understand that his hearers were actuated by a 
sentiment of patriotism, as well as by those other interests 
or superstitions which he thinks he meets so cleverly, may 
be compared and contrasted with Hezekiah' s address to 
his people, and their reception of it,t as w T ell as with his 
prayer to God, and his message to Isaiah. 

I am as unable as those before me, to suggest any reason 
why the communications between Hezekiah and Isaiah 
were carried on by message, upon the occasions specified 
in the text. The dispute whether verse 7 of chapter 
xxxvii. is a miraculous prediction, or an interpolation 
after the event, may be superseded by the consideration 
that men would not differ from the brutes that perish, if 
they had no power of anticipating the future from their 
knowledge of the past and present. The most foolish 
man has something of this power, as to those events in 
which he is vitally interested, though he may exercise it 
rather as an instinct than as a deliberate act of reason ; 
and much more the wise man. A man with such large 
* discourse of reason,' with such original and such culti- 
vated genius as Isaiah, is, indeed, God's most wonderful 
creation ; but I cannot think it does honour to the Creator 
to suppose that the Hebrew prophet — being such as he 
was, and acquainted not only with the general laws which 

* See note to page 5. 

f Quoted in page 246 above. 



PREDICTED BY ISAIAH. 



govern the rise and fall of despotisms, and connect a 
tyrant's failure in the field with violent death at home, 
but also with many details of Sennacherib's position and 
circumstances unknown to us — could not have predicted 
the fate of the Assyrian in the terms he does, without 
some special suspension of the ordinary, regular, working 
of the prophet's inspired mind. That Isaiah was inspired, 
that these utterances of his human wisdom and knowledge 
were all originated, sustained, and directed by the actually 
present, indwelling, spirit of God, and that the habitual 
prayer of faith was the means of keeping up this com- 
munion of the prophet with his God, I am anxious to 
assert in the most explicit words I can find ; and this, 
not to prove my own orthodoxy to myself or others, but 
as a point of positive (as distinguished from hypothetical) 
criticism, which must be recognized to be a fact, before 
any complete literary and philosophical examination of 
Isaiah's writings is possible : and such a recognition 
of Isaiah's inspiration is not less hindered by the hypo- 
thesis of a miracle than by that of an interpolation. 
And that each hypothesis is opposed to the facts, no less 
than to the spirit, of the narrative, will appear if we com- 
pare the historical detail of Sennacherib's overthrow and 
death as given, after the event, in verses 36 — 38 of 
chapter xxxvii., with the general expressions of Isaiah 
both in his first short answer to Hezekiah, and in the 
longer rhythmical one : for a miraculous communication, 
whether real or forged, should surely have contained those 
details, in order effectually to answer its purpose ; and if 
Isaiah had supposed that his first words did convey such 
an oracular prediction, he would hardly have omitted to 
repeat and dwell upon them in his subsequent prophecy, 
which he expressly calls ' the word which Jehovah hath 
spoken concerning Sennacherib, king of Assyria ;' — unless, 
indeed, we suppose that on both occasions the prophet 
was a mere automaton emitting articulate sounds. 

The word in verse 7 which our Authorized Version 
translates by 'blast ' — apparently understanding it to mean 
a pestilential blast, or a violent simoom or other storm — ■ 
is, I think, better rendered ' spirit,' with the wider sense 



3 i2 ISAIAH XXXVII. 21—29. THE REPLY 



that Jehovah will put forth the power of his spirit to 
master him, in some way not denned. 

When Rab-shakeh asserts, in his master's name, ' Jeho- 
vah said unto me, Go up against this land and destroy it,' 
we are reminded both of Timour's declaration that he was 
the incarnate wrath of God, and also of the less religious 
belief of Napoleon and other military despots in their 
destiny. Yet Sennacherib's self-confidence is essentially 
atheistic ; and is in this respect in accordance with all we 
know of military despotisms, modern no less than ancient, 
when they are at their climax : the old forms of worship 
will be retained, like the old forms of government, where 
they do not interfere with, or are even useful instruments 
of, the despot ; but when the physical force he wields is 
become the only real law, and no appeal remains from it 
to duties and rights, nor to an Absolute Justice the source 
of these, he himself becomes — for is he not ? — the god, or 
rather anti-god of those he rules. But the confidence of 
the virgin daughter of Zion in the strength of her Lord, 
and her consequent scornful defiance, are not less bold and 
peremptory than the Assyrian's : and the fact that her 
Loed makes her cause his own, and that he has been 
insulted in her person, makes it the more certain that 
he will answer Hezekiah's prayer, and avenge his own 
honour. 

It is probable that the word 'virgin' here, as in the 
usage of other languages and times, implies that the city 
is impregnable : and that Lebanon here, as elsewhere,"* 
stands for the land of Israel, having been possibly sug- 
gested by the thought of the success with which the 
Assyrians employed their cavalry in a country where it 
might have been expected to prove only an incumbrance, 
so that they seemed as if they could literally take the 
precipitous and wooded heights of Lebanon itself with 
their multitude of chariots and horses : the tall cedars 
and choice fir-trees, the border-heights, and the garden- 
like, or fruit-bearing, forests, are images, with more or less 
special allusion, of the princes and people, the temple, 
the cities, and the cultivated country of Judea. The force 

* Jerem. xxii. 23 ; Ezek. xvii. 3. 12 ; Habak. ii. 17; Zech. xi. 1. 



TO SENNACHERIB'S SUMMONS. 



3i3 



of the words of this and the next (24th and 25th) verses 
is much greater — and quite in harmony with English 
idiom — if we preserve the distinction of tenses in the 
original : the Assyrian has scaled the impregnable moun- 
tains and forests, he will take actual possession of all that 
he finds therein ; he has led his vast armies through the 
great deserts between Babylonia and Egypt, digging and 
drinking water, and he will tread the streams of Egypt 
dry, like so many puddles, — the drought and the flood 
being equally under his control.'" There is a like mix- 
ture of symbol and fact in the one verse and the other, 
while the whole is presented to the imagination as a 
picture or vision. 

Such is the boast which Sennacherib has ventured to 
utter against the Holy One of Israel. Observe the em- 
phasis of the expression : the Holy One of Israel is a 
Being whose Majesty no one violates with impunity, and 
who, if he be not sanctified by men, sanctifies himself in 
judgments, f Isaiah had at an earlier stage of the Assyrian 
conquests referred to these, we know habitual, boasts, and 
had replied to them that the conquerors were merely the 
instruments for carrying out God's predetermined and 
pre-arranged plan :$ and he makes the same reply again 
now, only that there he dwelt on the corrective discipline 
to which Zion was to be submitted according to that plan 
while here he assumes that the discipline has wrought its 
work, and that the scourge is done with. On comparing 
the images in verse 27 with those in verses 30, 31, we see 
that the actual devastation of the cultivated country sug- 
gests that under-current of thought which is more or less 
traceable in all poetry ; though the images themselves, in 
the first verse, are those of grass and green crops, which 
are so feeble as to fall at once before the scythe, or even 

' Cum cesserit omnis 
Obsequiis natura meis ? Subsidere nostris 
Snb pedibus montes ; arescere vidimus amnes : — 
Fregi Alpes, galeisque Padum victricibus haus-i.' 

Claudian's Speech of Alaric : Be Bello Getic. 526. 
k Credimus altos 
Defecisse amnes, epotaque numina Medo.' 

Juv. Sat. x. 176. Quoted by Lowth and Gesenius. 
f Compare chapters v. 16 ; x. 17 ; xxix. 23. 
t Chapter x. 



3H ISAIAH XXXVII 30 — 35. THE SIGN 

to die of themselves in a few weeks ; — nay, to heighten 
the emphasis, of the still feebler weeds which grow np in 
the chance dust and moisture on the housetops, and the 
corn which is sickly from its root. The following threat, 
of curbing and leading Sennacherib like a brute beast, is 
singularly illustrated by the bas-reliefs of Holwan and 
Khorsabad, which represent prisoners actually led in 
triumph by a hook through the nose and lips. 

The ' sign ' which Isaiah goes on to promise, in terms 
apparently made obscure in order to excite consideration, 
seems best explained to mean, that the Assyrian devasta- 
tions of the open country of the Jews had prevented the 
regular cropping of the land, and consequently the regular 
harvest, for the current year : and as the enemy was still 
in occupation of the country, there was no possibility of 
ploughing and sowing in preparation for the next year 
either ; but the season after that, the prophet confidently 
asserts that they would be able to sow and reap, and plant 
vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof. The promise is thus 
brought into strict harmony with the previous threat,t 
that ' the vintage should fail, and the gathering not come,' 
for a time which we must understand Isaiah there to say 
would be considerable, — whether we understand the ' days 
above a year ' of the original to mean ' more than a full 
year,' or look only at the general expressions in the follow- 
ing verses of the passage referred to. That what Isaiah 
meant there, he may have meant now, might seem answer 
enough to the objection, that those who give this explana- 
tion of the prediction of the loss of two harvests, must 
suppose the prophet to have expected the Assyrian occu- 
pation to last much longer than the history shows that it 
did : but the objection itself vanishes, if we recollect that 

* Thus the Spartan envoys express their sympathy with the Athenians 
who, in hearing the "brunt of the Persian invasion, ' had already been de- 
prived of two harvests : ' where Mr. Grote observes that as this was spoken 
before the invasion of Mardonius, the loss of two crops must mean the loss 
of the harvest of the past summer, together with the seed of the autumn 
immediately following ; and that the advice of Themistocles to his country- 
men, that ' every one should repair his house and attend to sowing his 
ground,' must have been found impracticable in most cases to carry into 
effect during that autumn. — Hercd. viii. 142 : Grote's History of Greece, 
v. 202. 

t Isaiah xxxii. 10. 



OF THE SPONTANEOUS CROPS. 315 

the movements of great armies against, and over, a country 
defended by deserts, and mountains, and fortified cities ; 
the political negotiations which preceded and followed 
these movements ; and the recovery of depopulated 
villages, and wasted cornfields and vineyards ; were not 
events which could begin and end within any such short 
space as it takes to write or read of them. Instances of 
two, and even three crops from one sowing are mentioned 
by Strabo, and are also said to occur in California at the 
present time. 

This sign is analogous in character to those of ' Im- 
manuel ' and ' Maher-shalal-hash-baz,' as well as to Noah's 
Kainbow, and to that given to Moses at the Burning 
Bush ;* and, we may add, to those of the water and the 
bread and wine of the Christian sacraments, and of all 
other symbols, of which the purpose is, not to establish 
faith in a future miracle because a present one has been 
wrought, but to supply such an outward and visible sign 
of the accompanying inward spiritual grace, as will, from 
the very constitution of man's being (of soul and body 
united), help him to realize the latter, as he could not do 
by any naked mental effort. And the thing here signi- 
fied has itself an inward and an outward part : for, as 
the spontaneously sowed and multiplied corn and fruit 
will be the foundation and materials of the regular culti- 
vation of the third year, so will the deserted villages and 
farms be replenished with the survivors of those who have 
for the present found refuge within the walls of Jerusalem ; 
and both the one and the other will be the types of that 
' holy seed,' the existence of which in the corrupt nation 
was made known to Isaiah at his first calling to the pro- 
phetic office, when he was told that he was to watch and 
wait, with the long patience of the husbandman, for the 
growing up of that seed, after the hard ground had been 
broken up, and the rampant weeds rooted out, by the 
ploughshare of repeated national calamity. ' The zeal of 
the Lord of hosts shall do this. . . . For I will defend 
this city to save it, saith Jehovah, for mine own sake, and 
for my servant David's sake.' David was the personal 

* Exodus iii. 12. 



316 ISAIAH XXXVII. 39 — 37. THE DESTROYER. 



representative of the faitli and righteousness of the nation, 
in the day that God renewed with him his covenant to 
continue the name and the kingdom of Israel for ever •* 
and that covenant God would keep, as long as there were 
any who in heart were of David's race, for their and 
David's sake : — for their faith and righteousness were not 
the less to be rewarded because these were the free gift of 
God, and the result of his choosing them, and not of their 
choosing him. 

I do not attempt to add to the discussion of the ques- 
tions, whether ' the angel of Jehovah,' that minister of his, 
which did his pleasure on the Assyrians, was a tempest, a 
hot wind, a pestilence, or some other of those powers of 
nature which, when employed by God's providence, are 
usually called his angels by the Hebrews ; whether there 
is any such improbability in the more explicit statement 
in the Book of Kings, — that this great multitude were 
destroyed in a single night — as demands that it should 
be restricted by the terms of the account before us, and of 
that in the Chronicles ; and whether the Egyptian record 
of the same catastrophe, as preserved by Herodotus, 
throws any further light upon it. A positive determina- 
tion of them is not at all necessary to our substantial 
understanding of the case ; though, of course, every fact 
of history, however minute, may have its value, when 
ascertained to be a fact ; and it is unfortunate that the 
modern commentators on this passage should show so 
much disposition to bend their criticism to a foregone 
conclusion, orthodox or rationalist. The story of Hero- 
dotus seems to me erroneously called a transfer of the 
scene of the event to Egypt, and a substitution of the 
names of Sethos and Vulcan for Hezekiah and Jehovah : 
Sennacherib's army was menacing Egypt as well as Judea 
at the time ; and he did, shortly after, beat ' the kings of 
Egypt with the horsemen and footmen belonging to the 
King of Ethiopia, of which the numbers could not be 
counted;' and a detachment^ like that sent to Jeru- 
salem, may have appeared at Pelusium : and certainly 
the matter of interest and thankfulness to Sethos was 

* 2 Samuel vi. 12, 13. 



SETHOS AND VULCAN. 



that he and his country, not that Hezekiah and the 
Jews, were delivered by the providential destruction of 
their common enemy. And though we admit as probable, 
nay certain, that all the coatings of the superstition which 
represented the Egyptian god Vulcan as the deliverer, were 
not the additions of a later priestcraft ; though we allow 
that this was more or less the belief of Sethos himself, and 
that he could not ' speak the language of Canaan, and swear 
to the Lord of hosts,' with that clearness of heart and mind 
with which Isaiah had foretold that the Egyptians should 
1 know Jehovah in the day that he sent a saviour to 
deliver them still the student who has an eye for the 
good, as well as for the evil, of the religions of the world, 
will not fail to distinguish in the narrative of Herodotus, 
the record of a true though imperfect recognition by the 
Egyptians that neither Sennacherib, nor Tirhakeh, but an 
invisible and divine Lord, was the real master of Egypt 
and its destinies, and that this providential deliverance was 
so clear an instance of his rule, that it should awaken a 
sentiment of piety in every one who learnt the story : — 
Ijme Tt9 opewv, evoefii]? eWw.'" 

Sennacherib's account of this war, if taken with the 
qualifications proposed, relieves the student of Isaiah's 
prophecies and policy of a certain difficulty. The 
notices in these and the corresponding chapters, taken 
with the account of Herodotus, and the inscription on a 
temple at Thebes which, according to Wilkinson, records 
Tirhakeh's successful opposition to Sennacherib, indicated 
the most probable supposition to be that the Assyrian 
king retreated from the Ethiopian, either after sustaining, 
or without waiting for, a battle in the south-west of Judea. 
And then to bring this into harmony with Isaiah's steady 
denunciation of the alliance of Israel with Egypt, which 
might thus seem to have succeeded, instead of failing as 
he predicted, we had to suppose that Sennacherib's boast, 
that Tirhakeh would not be able to help Hezekiah, was 

* This mention of Sethos, or Zet, hy Herodotus, as the contemporary of 
Sennacherib, and therefore of Tirhakeh, is in favour of those who hold the 
Tanitic and Ethiopian dynasties to have been synchronous : M. Bunsen sup- 
poses Sethos to have been put instead of Tirhakeh, by some inadvertence of 
the Greek historian. 



3'8 



SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 



well founded when uttered ; and that the Ethiopian army 
would not have ventured to attack that of Sennacherib, 
unless the latter had first been weakened by the great and 
sudden destruction effected in it by the immediate hand of 
God. This would indeed be a sufficient fulfilment of the 
spirit of the prophet's language, rightly understood ; and 
we might be content if we had no better. But Sennache- 
rib's own account, that he fought and beat the countless 
hosts of Egypt and Ethiopia at Altakeh, suits the prophet's 
anticipations better ; while the after abandonment of his 
advantage by Sennacherib meets the requirements of 
the narrative of Herodotus, at least as well as the other 
supposition. 

The revolt of Babylon and of the Medes, and perhaps of 
other dependencies not mentioned in history as these are, 
concurred to weaken the Assyrian empire of the sword at 
this period ; and Sennacherib ' decamped, departed, re- 
turned, remained at Nineveh,' — a description which has 
been compared to that of Catiline by Cicero — abiit, exces- 
sit, evasit, erupit,- — without troubling Judea again. His 
inscriptions record the events of five subsequent campaigns, 
chiefly against Babylon and Elam, and none in the West. 
Sir Henry Kawlinson, M. Oppert, and Dr. Schrader see 
indications in these inscriptions that Sennacherib had 
suffered some reverse the nature of which he does not 
mention ; and I have for the most part followed the view 
of the last of these authorities in my own argument on 
the subject.'" 

I have already shown, at so great length, how the suc- 
cessive events of the War of Freedom affected the minds 
of the more thoughtful and religious Germans, that I must 
here content myself with referring the reader to the terms 
in which Niebuhr maintains that there had never in any 
age been a more signal manifestation of God's hand than 
in their final deliverance ' when the need was the sorest, 
when all human wisdom and strength had failed. 'f The 

* Outline, p. 25 ; Inscriptions des Sargonides, p. 40 ; Keilinschriften, u. d. 
A. T. 191 ff. 

f ' The hand of God in Prussia's deliverance from a foreign yoke,' in 
Niebuhr' s Life and Letters, iii. 115. 



PROVIDENCE IN HISTORY. 



3'9 



same writer observes in his Lectures on Roman History,"* 
that there are occasional points of time at which the whole 
course of history, and of the fates of nations, is decided 
by some event which does not grow necessarily out of 
previous events, and which a reasonable man can only 
explain by referring to the providence of God. Mr. Grote, 
on the other hand, recognizes, but leaves unexplained, 
such master-events of history. He points out, that if 
Darius had not — contrary to probable expectation — de- 
layed the first Persian invasion till the Greeks had had 
twenty years for efficient preparations, they must have 
been overwhelmed, and Greece, such as it has been to 
the world, would never have existed ; and he draws the 
general inference, ' that the history of any nation, con- 
sidered as a sequence of causes and effects affording 
applicable knowledge, requires us to study not merely real 
events, but also imminent contingencies :'t but there he 
stops. And when Niebuhr takes me a step further, and 
shows me a ' cause affording applicable knowledge,' where 
Mr. Grote only indicated an unexplained ' effect,' I must 
think that Niebuhr' s is the more completely scientific 
criticism — the criticism which takes the most complete 
cognizance of all the facts. The study of the complicated 
workings of a steam-engine, with its arrangements for 
supplying its own water, oiling its own wheels, changing 
vertical to horizontal movements, and so on, would lead 
me to admit rather than to deny that the hand of the ever- 
watchful engineer might occasionally intervene to give the 
machine some new application, or to prevent some hideous 
crash ; least of all could I pass such explanation in silence, 
as though it had no interest to a rational man. 

* English Translation, vol. ii. p. 146. 
f History of Greece, iv. 353. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



ISAIAH XXXVIII. — THE SICKNESS OF HEZEKIAH — IMPORTANCE OF HIS LIFE TO 
HIS NATION — HIS DESIRE OF RECOVERY NOT PURELY SELFISH. — FEAR OF 
DEATH IN OLD TIMES. — CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. — THE SIGN OF THE 
SHADOW ON THE SUN-DIAL. — TWO ACCOUNTS'— THE CONTEMPORARY ONE 

NOT MIRACULOUS. THE BIBLE TO BE TREATED LIKE OTHER BOOKS. — NOT 

SO TREATED BY SCEPTICS. THE HYMN OF HEZEKIAH. 

' TN those days was Hezekiah sick unto death.' — It is 
said that the treatment of plague-boils in the East 
still corresponds with that prescribed by Isaiah on this 
occasion ; and from this, as well as from the other possible 
allusions (already noticed) to the existence of pestilence in 
Jerusalem and in Sennacherib's army, it has been sug- 
gested that this deadly sickness was the plague ; and that 
it occurred before the country was freed from the enemy 
is the natural inference from the words in verse 6. But 
some commentators maintain the other hypothesis, and 
Delitzsch says that the Hebrew word Vnw means an 
abscess, and never a plague-spot. Either way, the absence 
of any allusion to the deliverance in Hezekiah' s song is 
one of those facts which, in historical documents, are so 
perpetually contradicting our notions of what was likely 
to have been said or done, and which teach us within 
what narrow limits all deductive criticisms must be kept 
if they are not to become mere speculations of the fancy. 

This sickness and recovery of Hezekiah from the gates 
of death, was an event of such national importance as 
made it properly find a place here, as well as in the his- 
torical books. For the throne of David, as far as we 
know, was without an heir at this moment ; and Heze- 
kiah' s death might have been followed by some such inter- 
regnum, anarchy, and seizure of the crown by a soldier, 
as hastened the downfall of the kingdom of Ephraim. Such 



ISAIAH XXXVIII. i—8. HEZEKIAH SICK. 321 



a failure in the succession, in times of national depression 
and disorganization, would be pregnant with evil even in 
England now ; and we must remember that in Judea then, 
as in all Eastern and patriarchal governments still, the 
personal character of the hereditary sovereign was of an 
importance to the people which it has to a great degree, 
though not utterly, lost in every country of Europe except 
Eussia. Let us contrast the character and acts of Heze- 
kiah with those of his immediate predecessor and successor, 
and we shall see of what moment it was that the interval 
by which his reign separated theirs should be prolonged 
fifteen years ; and especially when the country needed a 
hand disciplined by experience and guided by faith to 
recover it from the moral and material disorganization into 
which (as we know from Isaiah's discourses) it had fallen 
during the Assyrian supremacy. And thus this crisis in 
the personal life of Hezekiah — the fact cannot be denied, 
though here, as in so many like cases, our philosophy 
cannot trace out the connection of cause and effect — 
became the type and symbol of the like crisis in the life 
of the nation : it, too, was sick unto death, and was 
granted a new period of life by God, after it was past the 
help of man. 

And therefore it will rather argue our own low moral 
standard than our understanding of Hezekiah' s state of 
mind, if we see nothing but selfishness and weakness in 
his lamentations at the prospect of death. Selfishness and 
weakness we may find there, for in whom are they not 
found in the hour of extreme suffering ? — but we may 
also find patriotism and piety in his words. Ever since his 
accession to the throne, and no doubt long before, Heze- 
kiah had been possessed by the idea that he was called by 
Jehovah to reform and restore the nation : he had been 
labouring in the work for fourteen years, amidst the 
greatest difficulties ; and now all was to be broken off 
prematurely ; he was neither to be permitted to go on 
working for the natural ' residue of his years,' nor to hand 
over a finished task to his children, and thus make known 
to them Jehovah's truth by his life, as well as by words. 
These feelings on Hezekiah's part seem to be recognized in 

T 



322 



FEAR OF DEATH. 



Isaiah's subsequent promise that he should recover : for 
the promise is from ' Jehovah, the God of David his father,' 
and involves an assurance, not only of his own escape 
from death, but also that the city as well as himself should 
be delivered out of the hand of the King of Assyria ; and 
thus reminds him that his life is prolonged, not for his 
individual merits, nor for his individual advantage, but 
because of God's covenant with the house of David, and 
that he may fulfil the duties to which that house has been 
called. If a man has a real work to do in the world, he 
must lament if it is not permitted him to accomplish it : 
he will lament even though he acquiesces in the absolute 
will of God, and believes that God will accomplish his own 
good design, even more perfectly, through this apparent 
frustration of it by the power of nature and circumstances. 
Moreover, before the death and resurrection of Christ there 
was also a far greater — nay almost entire — obscurity and 
gloom over the future, even to those who had most 
habitual faith in God. It is difficult — perhaps, except 
for a moment, impossible — for us now to realize all they 
then felt ; for in our times a man has, with few exceptions, 
either become too occupied with the duties or the pleasures 
of this world to have very deep thoughts on death, or the 
discovery of their depth and darkness has driven him to 
find light and life in the clear hope of the resurrection 
which the Gospel has made known to us : but we can see 
from the language of Hezekiah, and from the like expres- 
sions in some of the Psalms, that the holiest men of old 
could not but look on death as a descent into hell ; and 
therefore, though they believed that God was there also, 
they shrunk instinctively from it, and desired rather to 
serve him in the land of the living. We may contrast 
Hezekiah' s language on this occasion with that of St. Paul 
in his Epistles to the Philippians, and to Timothy. 

The corresponding narrative in the Second Book of 
Kings relates the going back of the shadow on the degrees 
or steps of Ahaz as a miracle ; but the account before us 
falls within the ordinary laws of Providence and nature. 
And I think that on comparing the two documents (that 
in the Chronicles is so brief as to throw no farther light 



PROMISE OF RECOVERY. 323 

on the question) by the ordinary methods of historical 
criticism, we may see that though both the writers 
believed in the possibility of miracles, which in their 
minds were not separated by any marked division from 
what we now call providential events, yet the contem- 
porary historian does not describe the occurrence in terms 
that exclude any explanation but that of miracle, because 
he described simply and honestly what he or his informant 
saw, and which in fact was not a miracle : whereas the 
other, living 200 years or more after the event, introduces 
the miraculous element into the account by a few trans- 
positions and variations which to him — to whom the 
miracle is the most obvious, nay the only conceivable, 
means of understanding the original documents— seem a 
mere matter of literary compilation and explanation. He 
is just as simple and honest here as when he is abstracting 
the most ordinary fact from the mass of chronicles before 
him ; and as unconscious of the change he has Avrought as 
are the various commentators who, down to the present 
day, take for granted that the statements in the Book of 
Kings are a mere supplement to those in Isaiah, without 
any difference in kind. If we prefer to believe that verses 
21 and 22 of the chapter (xxxviii.) before us are a part 
of the original document added by the author at the end, 
when he saw that he had omitted, in the proper part of 
the narrative, the facts they mention, the whole occurrence 
will appear to have been this : — that Hezekiah being 
dangerously ill, Isaiah, under an impulse which he, like 
Socrates, recognized to be from God, but which directed 
the Hebrew prophet what to do, while it only admonished 
the Greek philosopher what to abstain from, went to warn 
the king that he must prepare for inevitable death ; and 
then left him in great trouble at the declaration, and in 
earnest prayer that his life might be spared. In this grief 
and prayer Isaiah both as a patriot and as a personal 
friend fully sympathized : and being soon convinced that 
Jehovah had heard their prayers, and that he was em- 
powered to promise Hezekiah recovery instead of death, 
he returned to announce this new ' word of J ehovah ; ' and 
to prescribe the medical means which were to be employed 

Y 2 



THE SIGN ON THE DIAL. 



in faith of the result. Hezekiah's grief, as we see in the 
accompanying record of it, had expressed itself in lamenta- 
tions that he was cut off from 'seeing Jehovah,' that is, 
worshipping him in his temple at Jerusalem ; and Isaiah's 
promise was couched in the form of an assurance that he 
should go up to the temple again in two or three days, as 
we should say.'" Hezekiah asked for 'a sign' that the 
promise would be fulfilled ; and then Isaiah referred to a 
phenomenon which occurred at the time, but which we 
know, though they could not, to have involved no suspen- 
sion of the laws of nature. t Dr. Alexander's literal trans- 
lation of the text (which I give, because he is entirely in 
favour of the miraculous explanation) removes all the 
difficulty which appears from the use of the future verbs 
in our Authorized Version. He reads : — ' And this to thee 
the sign from Jehovah, that Jehovah will perform this 
word which he hath spoken : Behold I (am) causing the 
shadow to go back, the degrees which it has gone down 
(or which have gone down) on the degrees of Ahaz, with 
the sun ten degrees backward ; and the sun returned ten 
degrees, on the degrees which it had gone down :' — and not 
only is the statement of the Book of Kings, that the terms 
of the sign were deliberately chosen by Hezekiah, wholly 
wanting here, but neither is there anything that requires 
us to suppose that the sign occurred at the very moment 
in which Isaiah first directed the remedy of the figs, and 
promised the king's recovery. The analogy of Isaiah's 
method of employing and appealing to ' signs ' on all other 
occasions, rather favours the conclusion that neither he 
nor Hezekiah would have been in such haste ; and that 
they would have thought the phenomenon of the shadow 
equally a sign and pledge that the promise should hold 
good, though it did not occur till Hezekiah was already in 
the way of recovery. 

If, on the other hand, we think with some commentators 
that verses 21 and 22 are a later addition, we may suppose 
that Isaiah witnessed the going back of the shadow on the 

* Compare Hosea, vi. 2. 

f Vi'riniia and Gesenius refer to instances of like effects, in modern times, 
of a refraciion caused by some vapour or cloud. 



THE SIGN NOT MIRACULOUS. 



3 2 5 



steps of Ahaz, as he went through ' the middle court,' and 
that he saw in it the sign that their prayers were heard, 
and thereupon returned to Hezekiah. Whether those 
verses are a part of tli3 original text or not, it may be 
possible for Hebrew scholars to decide, when they can 
divest their minds of certain prejudices which are hitherto 
so strongly shown in their conclusions on either side. 
There still remains the prediction, that Hezekiah should 
live fifteen years ; and which, it is said, compels us still to 
choose between a miracle and a narrative after the event. 
I think not : I believe all histories contain coincidences as 
important and striking, which we never suppose to be 
miraculous: and it may also be doubted whether 'fifteen' 
is not a round and definite, put for an indefinite, number ; 
and whether the compilers of the habitually imperfect, and 
often inaccurate, Hebrew chronologies, may not have 
calculated the length of Hezekiah' s reign from this very 
statement, assumed to have been literally fulfilled. But 
even if a slight change in, or addition to, the text, be here 
the alternative to a miracle, I see less difficulty in the 
former than in the latter ; though I cannot give all the 
arguments, without writing a complete essay on the 
miracles of the Old Testament, — which, indeed, is a work 
much wanted."" 

Let me, however, notice one probable objection : namely, 
that in thus unscrupulously applying the ordinary methods 
of criticism to the scriptural documents before us, we are 
forgetful of the reverence due to the Bible as God's revela- 
tion. It is not reasonable to reply to such objections, that 
truth is truth, and that an honest inquirer will disregard 
the consequences to which the pursuit of truth leads him. 
He is not a rational, if he is an honest, inquirer after 
truth, who fancies it is to be attained without that careful 
verification of his first notions, which can only be effected 
by bringing these to the test of all facts which properly 
bear on the subject ; and the man who by indepen- 
dent observations and experiences has ascertained the 
fact that the Bible is the Book of Life and Light, and 
has a real unity in itself, is not only not unphiloso- 

* See my Miracles and Science, published in 1854. 



326 



' THE DEGREES OF AHAZ! 



phical if lie insists on employing this fact to verify a 
critical conclusion as to such a point as we here speak of, 
but he would be unphilosophical if he were to take any 
other course. But I appeal confidently to the result, if 
he, being a reflecting as well as a religious man, does 
apply this very test. Just as the critical investigation of 
the works of Herodotus, or Livy, has heightened the 
respect of real scholars for authors Avhom the half-informed 
alone think objects of patronizing self-conceit ; so a man's 
reverence for the Bible is helped, and not hindered, when 
he frankly and clearly recognizes the fact that its docu- 
ments are not objects of superstitious idolatry, but of manly 
investigation, and thereby of a respect and reverence such 
as can never be felt for an idol, by whatever name we may 
adjure its worshippers. And, as it is often instructive to 
see ourselves reflected back in those most opposite to us, 
let us consider that there is a school of thinkers, at the 
head of whom were Hume and Gibbon in the last age, and 
who have not less able and learned representatives in our 
own, who quite accept the dogma that the Bible is not to 
be treated like other books ; and that neither for them, 
nor for those whom their opinions in any way influence, is 
the result reverential for the Bible. And, lastly, I ask the 
reader who has accompanied me thus far, in my deliberate 
and avowed plan of treating this book of Isaiah like any 
other book, what he actually finds to be the result ? 
Does he feel less reverence for it, or for the Book of which 
it is a part ? Does he find that he holds the old Christian 
faith of his fathers, that this Book is indeed the Word of 
God, less heartily than he did before ? 

The questions, of some archaeological interest, whether 
the 'degrees of Ahaz' were a sun-dial introduced by that 
king with other Assyrian fashions ; or only a flight of 
steps on which a column or other body cast a shadow ; or 
whether it was the latter, expressly devised for a sun- 
dial ;.* have been discussed with much learning : but as 
no one conclusion can be positively preferred, the reader 
will find it best to examine them at length for himself. 

* 1 The obelisk of Augustus on the Field of Mars at Rome was of this kind, 
which served as a sun-dial.' — Delitzsch's Commentary, English Translation. 



ISAIAH XXXVIII. 9 — 20. HEZEKIAH' 'S PSALM. 327 



It may be worth while to observe, that, in any case, there 
is no reason for assuming (as some critics do) that the 
degrees marked such large divisions of time as would 
require a refraction of the sun's rays far beyond any that 
has been witnessed on any other occasion on record. 

' The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he was 
sick, and recovered from his sickness,' is a description (as 
this title seems exactly to express) of his feelings and 
thoughts, during the very progress of his illness and cure ; 
verses 10 to 14 describing the former, and verses 15 to 
20 the latter. Mortal disease threatened to cut off his 
days, when their natural course was only at the middle ; 
he found himself suddenly deprived, as by a sentence of 
punishment, of the rest of his years ;* summoned to leave 
for ever the bright world of life, — which was so pleasant 
with its human fellowships, and with the presence of 
Jehovah in nature, in providence, in the nation, in the 
temple-services, and in his own heart, — and to enter the 
dark gates of the grave, alone, and without the sustaining 
thought that the Lord had passed them before him.t 
Like a shepherd's tent, which never remains long in one 
place, but has its pins hastily pulled up and its covering 
taken away (the words, says Dathe, implying violent and 
hasty removal), and leaves the lately busy encampment a 
silent desert again ; — so, says Hezekiah, my generation, 
the generation of those inhabitants of the world whom I 
shall behold no more, is departed, or plucked up from 
me.+ There seems to be no necessity for departing from 
the more usual meaning of the Hebrew word, which is 
certainly ' generation,' and rendering it by ' dwelling,' 

* ' Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita 

Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, 
Che la diritta via era smarrita. 
Ahi quanto a dir qual era e cosa dura 
Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte, 
Che nel pensier rinnuova la paura ! 
Tanto e amara, che poco e piu morte.' 

Dante, Inferno, I. i. 
f ' Grant, 0 Lord .... that through the grave and gate of death, we 
may pass to our joyful resurrection ; for His merits who died, and was 
buried, and rose again for us, Thy Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.' — Collect for 
Easter Even. 

X Longfellow has the same image to describe the cares of life, which — 
' Shall fold thi j ir tents, like the Arabs, 
And as silently steal away.' 



328 



BITTERNESS OF DEA TIT. 



taken to mean ' body :' for the substitution of the image 
of his generation leaving him, for the thought of his 
leaving, them, is at least as agreeable to the genius of 
Hebrew poetry as it evidently would be to that of our 
own. The tent suggests the weaver's web, and the speaker 
first becomes himself the weaver, rolling up the web of his 
life ; and then the action is transferred to Jehovah, who 
is represented as about to cut the web off from the 
loom, or, more exactly, the thrum — or threads which join 
the web to the loom. Perhaps continuing the image 
of the weaver, he says that during the day he expected 
that with the arrival of night God would make an end of 
his life : during the night the fever raged in his bones as 
though a lion were gnawing at them, and he reckoned it 
impossible for him to survive beyond the morning ; but 
then again followed the day, with its dull monotonous 
suffering, so well expressed by the repetition of the words 
in which it was first described, — ' from day even to night 
thou wilt make an end of me.' Sometimes his pains made 
him cry out aloud : at other times, his strength was so 
low that he could only ' inwardly groan and bemoan 
himself (as the elder Lowth explains it). And then, 
changing the metaphor to that of a man pressed by an 
unmerciful creditor,'" he exclaims, ' 0 Jehovah, I am 
oppressed ; undertake for me.' 

In contrast with the ' I said,' of verses 10 and 11 
stands the ' What shall I say ? ' with which the psalm 
passes from the description of his sickness to that of his 
returning health. The suddenness of his delivery surprises 
him, so that he wants words to express his thankfulness, 
and can only say that Jehovah hath both spoken to him, 
and himself done what he promised. His soul has passed 
through great bitterness, and he shall remember it, and 
his deliverance from it, with awe, all the days of his life ; 
— or else, he will go up with reverent joy and thankfulness 
to the temple ever after ; the word being the same as in 
Psalm xlii. 4. In this time of danger in which God alone 
could have saved him, he has learnt to understand that 



* ' As that fell sergeant, Death, 

Is strict in his arrest.' Hamlet v. 2. 



JOY IN RECOVERY. 



3*9 



men do not live by mere course of nature but by ' these 
things' — by the word and power of God; and to this 
divine care he recognizes that his own life is now due. 
His great and bitter suffering of spirit as well as body is 
turned into peace ; he realizes that his sins, of which he 
had been brought into such fearful consciousness by the 
approach of death, and of which he felt, as men ever have 
felt, that death is the consequence and punishment, are 
forgiven him ; and that Jehovah has delivered him with 
the arms of love from the pit of destruction : — ' Thou 
hast loved my soul from the pit of destruction,' as the 
Hebrew beautifully expresses it. Then with a renewed 
expression of that strong feeling of the evil of death, and 
the blessing of life, and with an allusion to his hope of 
children now that his life is spared — both which we have 
already noticed — he rises more and more into the language 
of joy and triumph. ' Jehovah to save me ! ' seems to 
be in the form of a battle-shout ; and the ' songs for 
stringed instruments,.' to be sung in perpetual service in 
the House of Jehovah, may be best illustrated by those 
psalms which are evidently processional and choral, and in 
some instances, as Psalms cxvi. and cxviii., public thanks- 
givings after sickness, on occasions like the present. We 
might, perhaps, attribute Psalm cxviii., in particular, to 
Hezekiah himself, and in reference to this sickness. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



isaiah xxxix. — the embassy from babylon. — chronicle of eusebius, and 
berosus. — Sennacherib's annals. — books of kings and chronicles. — 

value of the latter. the sin of hezekiah. — trusting god in 

politics. modern history. — niebuhr and naples. colletta. 

reverence for great men. — nations and rulers re-act on each 
other. — hezekiah's reception of the embassy. isaiah's denuncia- 
tion. — 'apres moi le deluge.' — prosperity of england. — religious 
temper of our statesmen. — mr. gladstone. 

HAVE already given the substance of the notices of 
Merodach-Baladan and his times which, having been 
quoted from Berosus by Alexander Polyhistor, came to 
light a few years ago in the Armenian version of 
Eusebius's Chronicle ; and also that of the Assyrian 
Annals themselves, in as far as they are yet deciphered. 
The former account stands thus : — ' After the reign of 
Sennacherib's brother, Hagisa (or Acises) had possession 
of the Babylonian government, but was killed by Mero- 
dach-Baladan before thirty days had elapsed : and he too, 
after a reign of six months, was killed, and succeeded by 
a man named Elibus, in the third year of whose reign 
Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, marched an army 
against the Babylonians, defeated them in a pitched 
battle, sent Elibus and his friends prisoners to Assyria, 
and made his own son Asordan king of Babylon.' * The 
other account is, that Sennacherib, in the first year of his 
reign, fought and defeated Merodach-Baladan, whom he 
seems to have found in independent possession of Baby- 

* Berosi Fragmenta, in the Appendix to the 3rd volume of Bunsen's 
Aegyptens Stelle : and in Schrader's Keilinschriften, u. d. A. T. p. 216. This is 
the Armenian version of Eusebius's account of what Polyhistor relates of the 
Babylonian history which Berosus wrote from the original records. For pro- 
posed reconciliations of Ptolemy's Canon with Berosus, and of both with the 
Cuneiform Inscriptions, see Dr. Hincks in the Irish Transactions, xxii. 4, 364, ff., 
and Dr. Schrader, u. s. 



ISAIAH XXXIX. i—8. MERODACH-BALADAN. 331 



Ionia, but who now fled, leaving his country to be subju- 
gated, and put under an Assyrian vice-king ' a man of the 
name of Bil-ibus, the son of one of Sennacherib's confi- 
dential officers, who had been bred up in his palace :' and 
in the fourth year of Sennacherib's annals — that is, in the 
year after his campaign in Judea — he relates an expedition 
against the Chaldeans, and says, ' Merodach-Baladan, whom 
I had defeated in the course of my first } 7 ear, was afraid at 
the coming of my armies, he took his gods in their shrines, 
and fled with them, like a bird, into the country of Nagiti- 
Rakki, which was beyond the sea. His brothers, the 
offspring of his father's house, whom he had left on this 
side the sea, together with the men of the country, I 
brought out from the land of Beth Yakin in the marshes 
[of the Euphrates], and made them slaves : I destroyed 
and burned his cities. On my return I appointed my 
first-born son Assur Nadin to the government of the 
country, and gave him the land of Accad and Sumir.' The 
list of Babylonian kings in Ptolemy's canon does but add a 
third set of discordant notices. The ' son of Sennacherib's 
confidential officer, bred up in his palace,''" may have been 
his foster-brother, and the same person whom Berosus 
calls ' his brother :' but I do not pretend to reconcile the 
accounts. They will not, however, appear more different 
from each other than we might expect, if we remember 
that the deciphering of one is as yet more or less tenta- 
tive and that we have another at fourth or fifth hand, 
and with strong evidence of extreme carelessness in the 
compiler, Eusebius, himself. 

Babylonia, therefore, was at this period alternately a 
province of Assyria of such importance that royal princes 
of the imperial dynasty were appointed its viceroys ; and 
independent of, and in arms against, that power. And 
the latter was now the case. Merodach-Baladan may have 
seized the moment of Sennacherib's discomfiture in Judea 
to raise his standard again ; or at least have seen in that 
discomfiture an opening for an alliance with the first king 

* This is Sir Henry Rawlinson's translation : Dr. Schrader gives — £ den 
Sohn eines Weisheitskundigen in der Nahe der Stadt Suanna, welchen man 
in Gemeinschaft der kleinen Knaben in nieinem Palaste erzogen halte.' 



33 2 



THE BOOK OF CHRONICLES. 



whom, as far as we know, Sennacherib had not succeeded 
in finally reducing to submission.*" We can hardly doubt 
that the embassy, whether sent immediately before or after 
the revolt, was political ; and that the congratulations on 
Hezekiah's recovery, and the inquiry — though of interest 
to the Babylonian astronomers — as to the going back of 
the shadow, were subordinate objects to that of forming 
an alliance between Babylon and Judah. This, indeed, 
may be the meaning intended by the mention of the 
' letters and present,' which were sent to Hezekiah by 
Merodach-Baladan ; but even if there were no such 
sj)ecific advances on his part, the spirit of the whole 
transaction is not the less clear. There is an apparent 
difficulty in reconciling this account of the riches of 
Hezekiah — ' which his fathers had laid up in store until 
that day ' — with the statement in the Book of Kings and 
in the Assyrian Inscription, of the enormous tribute levied 
upon him by Sennacherib, and to which Isaiah seems to 
allude in chapter xxxiii. 2, 7, 8, 18. But the actual silver 
and gold taken from the treasury and stripped from the 
temple-doors and pillars would have been but a small part 
of the wealth contained in the uncaptured city of Jerusa- 
lem ; something even of the tribute may have been got 
back if ' the booty of a great spoil was divided,! when 
Sennacherib's army was discomfited ; and we know how 
rapidly a nation may recover its material losses, and 
exhibit renewed prosperity after a war. On this and on 
other points, the narrative before us may be advanta- 
geously compared with the parallel account in the Book 
of Chronicles. 

The author of the Chronicles gives predominance to 
the ecclesiastical, as the author of the Book of Kings 
does to the civil, side of their national history : he is 
extravagantly censured and depreciated by some modern 

* Those who adopt the chronology of the Assyrian Canon and at the same 
time retain the date of the 14th of Hezekiah for this embassy, of course place 
it before Sennacherib's invasion of Judea. I have already expressed my 
doubt as to that chronology having- been established. We owe much to the 
Assyriologists : but they are obliged to deal so largely in conjecture that it 
is best in many cases to take their translations, but for the present to suspend 
our judgment as to their historical reconstructions. 

f Chapter xxxiii. 23. 



HEZEKIAH AND HIS PEOPLE. 



333 



critics, not only for want of precision, but for prejudice 
and partiality — -as in omitting such unfavourable facts 
as the idolatries of Solomon ; but even if it be not 
enough to say in reply, that he refers his readers to 
then existing records for ' all the rest ' of the events which 
he thus warns them he does not give, and if we must 
admit him to have had the commonest failing of all his- 
torians, we shall lose not only many important facts but 
also much indispensable light upon those of the other 
historical books if we reject his help. Events which the 
original chroniclers would have narrated without explana- 
tion, because they were sufficiently intelligible of them- 
selves to contemporaries, he amplifies with explanations of 
their causes ; and he thus illustrates things which a dif- 
ferent state of mental development, as well as of outward 
circumstances, had made obscure to his own readers, and 
would, but for his aid, be obscure to us who, if we have 
more pretensions to philology and philosophy than he, 
have no longer all his sources of information. And he 
here throws light on the brief statements of Isaiah and 
the Book of Kings, by his account of the great prosperity 
of Judah after the overthrow of Sennacherib, and the way 
in which the friendship of her king was consequently 
courted by the neighbouring states ; by his pointing out 
that in the king's manner of receiving those overtures he 
represented the general feeling of his people, so that his 
act was properly national and productive of national con- 
sequences ; and by his calling our attention to the preg- 
nant truth that this act was but a first manifestation of 
what was already their settled state of mind and heart, 
and would therefore assuredly exhibit itself, not merely in 
this isolated expression, but in the whole subsequent 
career of the nation, until the state of mind itself was 
changed. And he explains what this state of mind was, 
in the words — ' Hezekiah rendered not again according to 
the benefit done unto him ; for his heart was lifted up ; 
therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Judah and 
Jerusalem : notwithstanding Hezekiah humbled himself 
for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of 
Jerusalem, so that the wrath of Jehovah came not upon 



334 



JUDAH' S TRUE POLICY. 



them in the days of Hezekiah.' Here was the old, deep- 
seated, vice re-appearing in a form adapted to the new 
circumstances of the time. The Hebrew nation — as 
indeed every other, now not less than then — could only 
stand by faith in its unseen yet ever-present King, and 
conscientious obedience to his laws : they had quite for- 
gotten this, not for the first time, during the prosperous 
reign of Uzziah, and had ceased to trust in anything but 
their own power and wealth, and the settledness of their 
institutions : when these failed them during the long years 
of Assyrian supremacy and invasion, they tried with no 
better success their systems of political alliances, intrigues, 
and counterpoises, in which Hebrew craft was to outwit 
barbarian force : and now when it might have been hoped 
that all this severe discipline had taught them how vain 
was their trust in either the one or the other, it needed 
but an opportunity — ' God's leaving them to try them, 
that they might know all that was in their heart ' — to 
prove that both king and people were ready to fall back 
on the old courses, so superficially had the lesson been 
learnt, and so immediately forgotten. Instead of keeping 
steadily in view the fact that their deliverance from Assyria 
was wrought by God, after all their own schemes had com- 
pletely failed, and adhering to the simple, straightforward, 
conduct which that fact pointed to, they were taking credit 
to themselves for the deliverance, and proposing, or accept- 
ing the proposal of, a new system of heathen alliances. In 
these, Judah was probably to be the patroness, and not the 
patronized : and the foreign policy which had been so 
ruinous in the hands of Ahaz, Shebna, and the kings of 
Samaria, was to be made successful by a combination with 
that of the powerful Uzziah, and such as he might have 
adopted had he not lived before the rise of the late 
Assyrian domination.'"' The fear which characterized the 
previous policy was now somewhat modified with pride ; 
but the spirit was the same : for it was the spirit which 

* Dr. Schrader indeed (Eeilinschriften, u. d. A. T. p. 115) thinks he finds 
some trace of such an alliance in an inscription of Tiglath Pileser, in which 
this king says he reduced nineteen districts and cities of Hamath which had 
rebelled against Assyria, and gone over to Az-ri-ya-a-hu mat Ja-hu-di — 
which certainly seems to be Azariah (or Uzziah) of Judah. 



ENGLISH STATESMEN IN 1815. 



has no faith that when a man or a nation keeps the 
plain road of duty and honesty the consequences may be 
expected without anxiety ; and which, therefore, substi- 
tutes for such adherence to duty some of those schemes 
by which mere worldly, godless, politicians are still, as in 
old times, ever striving to compass their ends, whether the 
subversion, or the restoration, of a dynasty or a party, or 
the acquisition, or the preventing of others from acquiring, 
a territory or an office ; but which at last brings them to 
the inevitable condition which Shakspeare describes as 
their fate, in words so significant as to be worth quoting a 
second time : — ' A politician, a man that would circum- 
vent God, o'er-officed by an ass.' 

The spirit of such policy is worldly and godless ; but if 
we will study it, and what the Bible reveals concerning it, 
for our own profit, we must look how it works still, as of 
old, in the religious and patriotic, and not in the merely 
selfish : — in the Hezekiahs rather than in the Shebnas. 
And though the quiet, legal, course of modern politics 
does not supply the most obvious illustrations of the eternal 
laws which govern it, yet these are as really at work with 
us as with other nations — only a little closer observation 
is necessary. A greater difficulty lies in the fire which 
still smoulders under the dead-looking ashes, on which 
he must tread who meddles with contemporary history : 
and, therefore, it is with hesitation that I suggest, that 
we may find a counterpart of Hezekiah's want of faith in 
the future guidance of the God who had led him through 
the past, in the repressive policy which our statesmen 
adopted, and so many of our patriots approved, after the 
peace of 1815. A large part of the best men of that day 
seem to have lost all clear belief that the God who had just 
delivered Europe from a mightier incarnation of sheer, 
arbitrary, force than Sennacherib's had any farther work for 
his Englishmen,' 7 ' and that he only required them still to 

* ' Now once again by all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct 
of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, 
God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in his Church, even to 
the reforming of reformation itself. What does he then, but reveal himself tc 
his servants, and, as his manner is, first to his Englishmen ?— I say, as his 
manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of his counsels, and 
are unworthy.' — Milton's Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. 



336 PRUSSIAN STATESMEN IN 1819. 



mark and follow the method of his counsels. They retained 
their faith in the ideal beauty of freedom and progress, — 
just as Hezekiah no doubt retained his faith : but, in a 
temper essentially analogous, though different in form, to 
that which prompted the alliance of Judah with Merodach- 
Baladan they renounced, for all practical purposes, both 
their youthful love of freedom and their maturer reverence 
for constitutional rights : and they avowed that, while 
their hopes for the future were utterly dim, their present 
trust was in the vulgarest expedients of police-craft ; and 
in resistance to the reforms which in the abstract they 
admitted to be desirable, but in the demand for which 
they would see nothing but man's sedition instead of the 
signs by which God was pointing to the forward road. 

Though I share the ordinary belief of my countrymen, 
as to the causes of the late European revolutions,"* and 
also as to the conduct of the several kings and govern- 
ments since the recovery of their power, I think it so 
impossible to speak of the internal politics of a foreign 
nation without misapprehensions and blunders, that I 
refrain from making the obvious applications which would 
otherwise be here at hand : yet, as I have illustrated a 
former part of my text at so great length from Niebuhr's 
pictures of his own, and his countrymen's, condition and 
temper during the War of Freedom, I must point to the 
last — only too faithful — resemblance between the two 
stories. Already, in 1815, Niebuhr had begun to lament 
that ' the first war did them no harm, but that was con- 
ducted in a different spirit from the present* one and in 
1819, after the description already quoted, of what might 
have been, when ' the ground was cleared,' &c, he says, — 
' No seed was sown, and so of course weeds shot up in 
rank luxuriance : nothing can exonerate those who neglected 
their duty at that time, from the blame of these results 
. . . the tone of public feeling has degenerated, and God 
knows how it is to be raised.' And, sadder still, we find 
the religious and philosophic statesman himself fallen 
under the same unbelief in God's methods. He still loved 
law and liberty as they appeared in past history, or as he 

* Written in 1852. 



NIEBUHR AND THE ITALIANS. 



337 



conceived of their restoration out of mediaeval institutions : 
but the actual process by which alone God will have law,, 
and liberty, and the various forms of human progress, 
developed, was too rough, and too soiled with hard and 
unskilful struggles, to be tolerable to him : he not only 
disliked it, as he did the organization of armies and police 
for the ends of despotism, but he was glad to employ these 
to put it down. Few things are more painful, 'few more 
instructive, to him who has studied the laws of political 
society by help of this great man's works, than that story 
of the course Niebuhr took when the Austrian army was 
at Kome, on its way to Naples. He might urge that the 
Neapolitans had not developed a constitution out of their 
old municipalities, which were most probably too effete 
for any such purpose ; that, with that fatal habit of Italy, 
whether conqueress or conquered, they had gone for their 
new polity to Spain, which, indeed, had given them the 
one good ruler whom they had known for centuries ; and 
that though their parliament did represent the majority, at 
at least, of the possessors of property and intelligence 
throughout the country, it worked but indifferently : but a 
Frenchman in Napoleon's time would have produced as 
plausible arguments for controlling Prussia by external 
interference, as could be adduced for meddling now with 
Naples. Yet Niebuhr, who, some five or six years before, 
could feel and write as we have seen, when the question 
was between France and Prussia, was now so eager to 
tread out the first poor spark of Italian liberty, that when 
the Austrian army was detained for want of funds, he 
(being Prussian Minister at Rome), without waiting for the 
directions of his government, pledged its credit with the 
Roman bankers, and so enabled the invading army to march 
on Naples without a moment's delay. * ' There and 
thus,' as the Neapolitan historian Colletta says, ' was a 
great deed of that policy of power which modern kings 

* There is apparently an expression of surprise, as well as of disapproval, 
at the natural consequences of the foreign interposition which Niebuhr had 
thus aided, in the following extract from a letter of his to M. de Bunsen, 
dated from Naples two years after that event : — ' It appears that new pro- 
scriptions are beginning, and that letters d'exil have come from Vienna. An 
officer has been ordered to leave the country, without even having been 
brought to any trial.' — Niebuhr' s Life and Letters, vol. iii. p. 55. 

Z 



338 



COLLETTA AND BUN SEN. 



and governments trust in, consummated against a people 
too feeble and too little wise to resist.' He adds, 1 that this, 
as every other like event, bears witness of the truth, 
which he will lose no opportunity of proclaiming, that 
neither revolutions nor despotisms will in the end avail 
anything ; but that the social culture and elevation of the 
whole people is the only effective instrument of worthy 
and durable political reforms, the only real governing 
power, and that to it must the nations direct their hopes 
and their acts.' And when I read these words of the 
man who was carried prisoner to Austria, and died in exile, 
for the part he had taken in the constitutional government 
of his own country ; when I consider that, whatever the 
defect, or positive evil, of some other elements of that 
government, it also contained, in the germ at least, these 
doctrines of Colletta, and that the wisdom and influence 
of himself, and of those who thought and acted with him, 
were there, to develop these germs, if time and oppor- 
tunity had been allowed ; when I remember that, bad or 
good, it was the government of the nation's own choice ; 
when I look at these things, and then think that it was 
Niebuhr who urged and aided the Austrian troopers in 
crushing Naples under their hoofs, and so leaving it at the 
mercy of a power worse than that from which his own 

In M. de Bunsen's defence of the political opinions and character of 
Niebuhr, which is prefixed to this volume, and in reference to the point which 
I have here noticed, he says — after stating the fact of Niebuhr's anticipation 
of his government's instructions to assist the Austrians — that their army, 
'in spite of the rapidity of its movements, could never get in sight of an 
enemy, not even in the impregnable pass of Androdoco.' But high as this 
statesman's authority is in any matter of history ancient or modern, it is 
not higher, on a point of contemporary Neapolitan history, than that of 
Colletta; and Colletta states, in substance, that the Neapolitan army and 
general, carried away by the undisciplined enthusiasm of raw levies, not 
only attacked the Austrians, instead of remaining on the defensive as pru- 
dence dictated, but attacked without ordinary caution. They advanced from 
the heights of Antrodoco in two columns, and attempted to take Rieti, 
where the Austrians were posted, with the first of these columns, before the 
other could arrive to its support. They were met by no such ill-directed 
measures ; and the Neapolitan army of ' civilians, unacquainted with war,' 
was soon thrown into confusion : a charge of Hungarian cavalry completely 
broke them ; and with a panic as universal as their previous courage, they 
fled and utterly dispersed : so that the Austrians, who advanced cautiously 
on the third day after, found the heights of Antrodoco, and the whole fron- 
tier, open to them, and without farther resistance reached Naples, and 
restored the absolute power of Ferdinand I. — Storia del Reame di Napoli, 
ix. 10, 32. 



MERODA CH-BALADAN' S EMBASSY. 



country had been delivered ; I cannot but conclude, in the 
words of the Bible, ' He rendered not again according to 
the benefit done unto him.' 

Nations and their rulers act and re-act upon each other. 
Hezekiah sank under the influence of the general demorali- 
zation, and really shared in it ; and then, by expressing it 
thus publicly in act, he confirmed it in the people. If he 
could have risen entirely above that influence, he would 
have done much more towards delivering the nation from 
it ; but we must not forget how very much he actually 
did, even though we suspect from his conduct on the 
present occasion, that he may not have been always so 
opposed to the policy of Shebna as Isaiah was. 

Hezekiah' s reception of the illustrious strangers has been 
compared with that of Solon by Crcesus, — tov SoXwi/a 
BepaTTovres irepir/yov Kara tou? Oi^aavpom kol eTriheLfcvvcrav 
TtavTa eovra jmeyaXa re kol oKfiia. — 'He was glad of them,' 
and showed them his arsenals, palaces, treasures, and 
curious and rare things, among which last may have been 
included ' the spices and the precious ointment :' or else 
these may have been specimens of the valuable products 
of 'his dominion' or realm, as we know Jericho and Gilead 
were famous for their balsam, and that Hoshea sent oil, as 
a present or tribute, to Egypt. It can hardly be thought 
improbable that Isaiah was purposely left in ignorance of 
all these things ; and that the king's uneasy consciousness 
of what the prophet's judgment would be, is indicated in 
his reply that the ambassadors came from a far country, 
as though he would make his hospitality seem a duty ; 
and in the reluctance with which he confesses that country 
to be Babylon. Isaiah saw at once into the heart of the 
matter. It was not long before that he had spoken thus 
to Hezekiah : — ' Thus saith J ehovah, the God of David 
thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears : 
behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years : and I will 
deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of 
Assyria : and I will defend this city :'• — and in this re- 
ference to the covenant with David and his line, and to 
the city, or nation, of w T hich he was the head in right of 
David, Hezekiah had seen a promise that the line should 

z 2 



34-0 



CHARACTER OF HEZEKIAH : 



not fail with himself. And now, this is Isaiah's message : 
— ' Hear the word of the Lord of hosts : Behold, the days 
come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy 
fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried 
to Babylon : nothing shall be left, saith Jehovah : and of 
thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt 
beget, shall they take away ; and they shall be eunuchs 
in the palace of the king of Babylon.' Hezekiah's reply 
expressed neither the highest magnanimity nor the mere 
selfish egotism which some commentators have seen in it ; 
but a mixture of feelings in accordance with all that we 
know of his character. His appreciation of his position 
and duties as a king, is shown in his restoration of the 
national worship, and his final resistance to Sennacherib, 
as well as in his general and successful care for the pros- 
perity of his country. But though a religious sense of duty, 
or the pressure of necessity, could occasionally stir him to 
master circumstances by a great effort, we may infer from 
the domination of Shebna, and from his own demeanour 
and language when supplicating Sennacherib's pardon, 
after the receipt of Pab-shakeh's message and Senna- 
cherib's letter, in the time of his own sickness, and on 
the present occasion, that his natural and habitual dis- 
position was rather to submit to the guidance of circum- 
stances, with a gentle and pious confession that this 
weakness of his character was beyond cure, and to accept 
the consequences with pious and affectionate resignation to 
God's will, and thankful acknowledgment of any mitiga- 
tion of them. He could enter into the meaning of the 
Psalmist's words, ' Thou wast a God that forgavest them, 
though thou tookest vengeance on their inventions :' and 
though he had not, like Moses or Paul, the stern courage 
which could ask that the punishment might be to himself, 
and the forgiveness to his people ; but on the contrary 
was thankful to learn that there should 'be peace and 
truth in his days :' it must not be overlooked that it was 
peace and truth to his country as well as himself, and not 
merely selfish security, that he was thankful for. For this 
distinguishes his case, and the case of those who in times of 
personal or public calamity are so often found ready to feel 



PIOUS, BUT NOT STRONG. 



and act like him, from that expressed in the sentiment 
— devoid alike of religious thankfulness and patriotic 
sympathy — that ' things will last my time.' The senti- 
ment is, indeed, in one respect the same in each case ; 
it expresses the natural, and therefore as far as nature is 
concerned, the inevitable, selfishness consequent on the 
expectation of calamities beyond resistance ; and the oppor- 
tunity which the late European revolutions'"' have given us 
of studying it close at hand, though happily not in our 
own country, enables us not only to understand its 
character better but to think more charitably of those 
who succumb under it, than we otherwise could have 
done. But though nature is always alike under like 
circumstances, it may, or it may not, be raised above 
itself by a spirit and a power higher than its own. That 
power can inspire and transfigure without destroying 
nature, and reflect itself even in the infirmities and defects 
of nature : and then, instead of the worldly ' Apres moi 
le deluge,' we have the pious ' Good is the word of 
Jehovah ; for there shall be peace and truth in my days.' 
The corresponding Greek and Latin phrases — 1/jlov Oavov- 
to9, ycLLa fjL%6{]T<o 7rvpL, and mihi mortuo omnes mortui 
sunt, — are quoted by Alexander from Calvin. Another 
phase of the temper they express, has been already con- 
sidered, where we had it described by Isaiah as that of the 
worldly men of Jerusalem. 

We too, like Hezekiah and his people, have ' exceeding 
much riches and honour, cities and treasures, and store- 
houses ; corn, and wine, and oil, and possessions of flocks 
and herds in abundance ; for God has given us substance 
very much :' and we too are exposed to the same tempta- 
tions as they ; and our nation, like theirs, may at any 
time fall under its power, and become obnoxious to its 
consequences and punishment. The warning example 
should never be absent from our thoughts ; for there is 
no one, even the humblest of us, who is not taking a real 
part in the workings of our commonwealth, and influencing 
its destiny for good or evil ; and that whether he will or 
not. There is much to fear for England ; yet much to 

* Written in 1852.- 



342 



MR. GLADSTONE : 



hope also from the increasing spirit of wisdom and under- 
standing, of counsel and might, in the fear of the Lord, 
which God is giving to our public men. The religious 
temper of so large a proportion of our statesmen, and their 
ever-rising moral standard of conduct in affairs, show so 
great a contrast with the low, vulgar, worldliness of more 
than one preceding generation, that it is already almost as 
if the sun were rising upon us through the thick darkness. 
And not the least promising among the signs of our 
happy times, is the personal character of him whom the 
many recognize now, as the few have long done, as marked 
out to be our First Minister within the next ten years :* 
who, while he possesses all the working powers of an 
English statesman, unites a more than ordinary readiness 
to look out for, and discern, the indications of God's plans 
and purposes, with a more than ordinary bravery in fol- 
] owing these at the sacrifice of that temporary applause, at 
the cost of that temporary blame, which the unthinking 
and the prejudiced multitude for the time attach to what 
they call inconsistency, but which the wise hail as en- 
lightened progress. It may be suspected, that many of the 
ecclesiastical, or even civil, opinions of this statesman, are 
not held by the author of these pages : but my aim has 
been, not to advocate opinions, but to elucidate a method, 
— the method, namely, which recognizes the government 
of a nation to be a problem too vast and complicated to 
be brought within the grasp of any one finite intellect ; yet 
a problem which is in itself rational, a deliberate design in 
God's counsels, and of which the statesman for the time 
being may always understand so much as the practical 
needs of the time require, and so much as will properly 
prepare the way for the next, as yet unindicated, step, 
provided that his judgment is enlivened by a God-fearing 
conscience, as well as enlightened by a cultivated intellect, 
and that he walks in the humility of wisdom, and not in 
the pride of self-sufficiency. The men who repealed the 
corn-laws could not foresee the revolutions of 1848, which 
we might not have escaped so easily if those laws had 
been then in existence : the men, who, during the previous 

* Written in 1852. 



ON AUTHORITY AND FREEDOM. 343 

ten or twelve years, have been laying deep and broad founda- 
tions for the moral and mental elevation of the working 
classes, could not foresee that the same revolutions, and the 
discovery of the gold regions with all its consequences, 
would open to those classes the road to so increasing a share 
of political power, as must end in the overthrow of our 
constitution, if they were to continue in their uneducated 
condition : but in the one case and the other there were 
sufficient indications to him who looked at the moral, as 
well as to the merely calculable, signs, and asked his con- 
science what was right, as well as his understanding what 
was wise. I will conclude this chapter with a passage 
from Mr. Gladstone, which, though little known, is worthy 
of Milton, or of Burke, for eloquence and constitutional 
philosophy, and not unconnected with the subjects we have 
been considering. 

' Miserable indeed would be the prospect of the coming 
times, if we believed that authority and freedom were 
simply conflicting and contradictory elements in the con- 
stitution of a community, so that whatever is given to the 
one must be deducted from the other. But no Briton, 
who has devoted any portion of his thoughts to the history 
of his country, or the character of its inhabitants, can for 
a moment be ensnared into that, for him, false and de- 
grading belief. It has been providentially allotted to this 
favoured isle that it should show to all the world, how 
freedom and authority, in their due and wise developments, 
not only may co-exist in the same body, but may, instead 
of impairing, sustain and strengthen one another. Among 
Britons, it is the extent and security of freedom which 
renders it safe to entrust large powers to Government, and 
it is the very largeness of those powers and the vigour of 
their exercise, which constitute, to each individual of the 
community, the great practical safeguard of his liberties in 
return. The free expression of opinion, as our experience 
has taught us, is the safety-valve of passion. That noise, 
when the steam escapes, alarms the timid ; but it is the 
sign that we are safe. The concession of reasonable 
privilege anticipates the growth of furious appetite. 
Eegularity, combination, and order, especially when joined 



344 



CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY. 



with publicity, have of themselves a marvellous virtue ; 
they tend to subordinate the individual to the mass, they 
enlarge by healthy exercise the better and nobler parts of 
our nature, and depress the poorer and meaner ; they 
make man more a creature of habits, and less of mere 
impulse ; they weaken the relative influence of the present, 
by strengthening his hold upon the future and the past, 
and their hold upon him. By gathering, too, into orga- 
nised forms the various influences that bear sway in a 
mixed community, and leaving them to work within pre- 
scribed channels, those which are good acquire the multi- 
plied strength of union, while the bad neutralise one 
another by reciprocal elimination. It is a great and noble 
secret, that of constitutional freedom, which has given to 
us the largest liberties, with the steadiest throne, and the 
most vigorous executive, in Christendom. I confess to 
my strong faith in the virtue of this principle. I have 
lived now for many years in the midst of the hottest and 
noisiest of its workshops, and have seen that amidst the 
clatter and the din a ceaseless labour is going on ; stub- 
born matter is reduced to obedience, and the brute powers 
of society, like the fire, air, water, and mineral of nature, 
are with clamour indeed, but also with might, educated 
and shaped into the most refined and regular forms of 
usefulness for man. I am deeply convinced, that among 
us all systems, whether religious or political, which rest on 
a principle of absolutism, must of necessity be, not indeed 
tyrannical, but feeble and ineffective systems ; and that 
methodically to enlist the members of a community, with 
due regard to their several capacities, in the performance 
of its public duties, is the way to make that community 
powerful and healthful, to give a firm seat to its rulers, 
and to engender a warm and intelligent devotion in those 
beneath their sway.''* 

* Letter to the Right Rev. W. Skinner, D.D., on the Functions of Laymen in 
the Church, pp. 15, 16. 

The reader inay compare Mr. Roebuck's description of the operation of the 
"immense safety-valve of parliamentary debate " in November, 1830; and 
his contrast between 1he French and English methods of enforcing opinions, 
in his History of the Wl.ij Ministry, vol. i. pp. 345, 35G. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



ISAIAH XL. — LXVI. — QUESTION OF THE GENUINENESS OF THE LAST CHAPTERS 

OF ISAIAH. ARGUMENTS ON EACH SIDE. A THIRD HYPOTHESIS. THE 

NAME OF CYRUS. CORESH, AND THE LORD'S SERVANT. MODERN EXPLA- 
NATIONS. DOUBTS AND CERTAINTIES. THE POSITIVE METHOD. COHE- 
RENCE OF EARLIER AND LATER PROPHECIES. THE EARLIER NOT FULFILLED 

AS ISAIAH HAD EXPECTED. ENLARGEMENT OF HIS VIEWS. FINITE AND 

INFINITE IDEALS. FACTS FOR INDUCTION AS TO THE NATURE OF PROPHECY. 

WE are now arrived at the question — itself a part, 
though the principal one, of a controversy of which 
I have already given the history — whether the last twenty- 
six chapters of the Book which bears the name of Isaiah, 
on a title-page which has come down to us as a part of 
the text itself, were really written by him, or by an other- 
wise unknown prophet living towards the end of the great 
Captivity. Each alternative is maintained, as clear beyond 
doubt, by the most recent commentators on both sides. 
But I cannot but think that a third view — -that these 
chapters, though in the main by Isaiah himself, have come 
to us re-edited with interpolations and perhaps other 
changes dating from the Captivity — is more in accordance 
with the best methods of historical criticism than either, 
though hitherto but little regarded : and that until this 
has been argued out as completely as the others have been, 
a final decision is premature. 

The first impression of every one who reads these 
chapters must be that he is carried by them into the time 
of the latter years of the Captivity rather than into that 
of Isaiah and Hezekiah. We seem to hear a prophet 
actually among the exiles by the waters of Babylon, com- 
forting them, warning them, and promising them deliver- 
ance from Jehovah. It is the strength of this impression 
which has up to the present time sustained the old belief, 



3+6 ISAIAH XL.—LXIV. ARGUMENTS AGAINST 



that these chapters are a series of miraculous predictions, 
with most of those commentators who still maintain that 
Isaiah was their author ; while it leads those who cannot 
recognize such a power of miraculous prediction among 
the endowments of a prophet, to the conclusion that he 
who could so write was himself living in those times. 
The latter critics go on to argue that while the writer 
prophesies the restoration of the Jews as a future event, 
he seems, as of course, and in the manner not of a prophet, 
but of a contemporary, to recognize the captivity, and the 
events which we know from history to have then occurred, 
as the state of things in which he was actually living. 
Micah, in the days of Hezekiah, foretold that ' Zion should 
be ploughed like a field, and Jerusalem become heaps, and 
the mountain of the house as the high place of the forest ; 
that the daughter of Zion should go to Babylon, and that 
there Jehovah should redeem her from the hand of her 
enemies — but let us fairly compare the tone of these 
words with the following : ' That saith to Jerusalem, thou 
shalt be inhabited, and to the cities of Judah, ye shall be 
built, and I will raise up the decayed places thereof; that 
saith to the deep be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers ; 
that saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform 
all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be 
built, and to the temple, thy foundation shall be laid :'t — 
and by the side of both these passages let us put the 
opening words of Ezra's narrative : ' Now in the first year 
of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of Jehovah by the 
mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, Jehovah stirred up 
the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a procla- 
mation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in 
writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, Jehovah 
God of Heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the 
earth, and he hath charged me to build him an house at 
Jerusalem, which is in Judah : who is there among you of 
all his people ? his God be with him, and let him go up 
to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of 
Jehovah God of Israel (he is the God), which is in Jeru- 
salem : ' + — And then do we not see how different the tone 

* Micah iii. 12 ; iv. 10. f Isaiah xliv. 26. ; Ezra i. 1, 2, 3. 



THE AUTHORSHIP OF ISAIAH 



347 



of the first passage is from that of the second, and how 
like that of the second to the third ? The name of Cyrus 
is repeated in the xlvth chapter of Isaiah : and in the 
lxivth we have the words, ' Thy holy cities are a wilderness, 
Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation, our holy 
and beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is 
burned up with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid 
waste ; ' while the rest of the chapter is an appeal to 
Jehovah to put an end to this miserable condition of his 
people, and is thus one of several instances in which that 
condition — the actual and now long existing captivity — is 
assumed in a way which unprejudiced criticism, it is urged, 
must admit to be historical, not prophetic. 

I feel the force of this argument as often as I read these 
chapters : yet when I endeavour to distinguish between 
feeling and critical judgment, and to test the former by 
the latter, I am compelled to ask myself whether much of 
the feeling does not draw its life from an atmosphere of 
uncritical suppositions with which the question has been 
surrounded from time immemorial, and which, by habitual 
acceptance and inveterate use, have come to give an 
apparent historical reality to words and phrases which 
have not necessarily such significance, but are just as 
capable of other explanations. The suppositions — that the 
mention of Egypt and Ethiopia in chapter xliii. 3 refers 
to the invasion of those countries by Cambyses, the son of 
Cyrus, and that of ' treasures of darkness ' in chapter xlv. 3 
to the conquest of Croesus by Cyrus himself ; that ' light 
and darkness ' in chapter xlv. 7 allude to the dualism of 
the Persian theology ; that the expression ' vessels of 
Jehovah ' * in chapter Hi. 1 1 has an historical connection 
with Ezra i. 7, 8 ; that the description of the gates of 
Babylon as of brass and with two leaves, and the naming 
Bel and Nebo as gods of Babylon, indicate some personal 
observation of these objects ; — these, and such like suppo- 
sitions, are very plausible, and give an impression of 

* The word D^bs is ' a word of general import' (Gesenius) meaning any 
kind of implement or equipment ; and Rosenmiiller, and Cheyne (following 
Luzzatto) here prefer to translate ' armour.' I retain the rendering — 
1 vessels ' — of the Authorized Version, as the only generic word which is 
suitable English. 



3+8 



ARGUMENTS FROM WORDS: 



probability, yet, in truth, they are of no critical value, 
even if the writer were proved on other grounds to be a 
contemporary of Cyrus. The many ingenious and plausible 
interpretations of the Book of Daniel and the Apocalypse, 
as specific predictions of innumerable events in mediaeval 
or modern history, show that there is hardly any limit to 
the power of the imagination to give a specific and local 
meaning and colour, and that with great appearance of 
reality, to almost any such language. 

The value of arguments drawn from differences of ideas, 
sentiments, and style, and from the presence of certain 
words or idioms, has been considered in Chapter IX. As 
to the last point, I will now add that while Gesenius here 
gives a list of fifteen supposed modern words and usages, 
he throws great doubt on the possibility of distinguishing 
between fancy and fact in the matter, when he says that the 
Hebrew literature of the date of the exile is so free from 
any strong Chaldaic colouring, as to account for the reluc- 
tant admission of Eichorn and Bertholdt that they could 
find none in these latter chapters, and when he allows that 
the resemblances of style between these and the unques- 
tioned works of Isaiah are such as he can best explain by 
supposing that the two were harmonized by an editor : that 
Knobel also gives a long list of modern words or usages 
which Delitzsch maintains to prove nothing ; and that Mr. 
Cheyne, with the arguments of both these learned com- 
mentators before him, says — ' the argument from phrase- 
ology in Hebrew is merely a subsidiary one. The literature 
at our command is so narrow in compass, and has, in our 
opinion, been so often tampered with by unscrupulous 
editors, that any detailed description of the language must 
be attempted with the utmost caution.''" 

As regards the argument from differences of ideas, 
sentiments and style, — while I recognize the differences 
(though not without seeing the resemblances too), I would 
here point out that a great part of these differences 
become important, or otherwise, according as we do or 

/ * The Book of Isaiah, chronologically arranged, by T. K. Cheyne, M.A. 
Introduction, p. xix. I have already quoted this passage in Chapter IX., 
but now repeat it in order to complete my statement of the case. 



FROM IDEAS AND SENTIMENTS : 



do not admit the existence of certain connecting links 
between the earliest and latest prophecies. There are a 
large number of marked resemblances between chapters 
xiii. xiv. and the undisputed prophecies ; between chapters 
xiii. xiv. and chapters xxxiv. xxxv. ; and again between 
these last and the prophecies now before us : the latter 
(undisputed portion) of chapter xxi. is identical in ideas 
and style with the earlier part of the same chapter which 
speaks of Babylon in a way which is assumed to be only 
possible for a writer living in the Captivity : and in like 
manner chapters xxiv. to xxvii. are as nearly connected on 
the one side with the undisputed prophecies as they are 
on the other with these (chapters xl. — lxvi.), which are 
referred to the Captivity. And while there is no sufficient 
reason for separating chapters xiii. xiv. from the genuine 
prophecies, there is no reason at all, except the resemblance 
to the last part of the Book, for so separating chapters 
xxiv. — xxvii., and xxxiv. xxxv. We find intermediate 
forms, and connecting links : they are taken away ; and an 
argument is based on their absence. 

This is true, not only of other minor arguments, but of 
that ' argument from the omission of any reference to the 
Messianic King ' which Mr. Cheyne — agreeing In this with 
other learned critics — says ' may perhaps be fairly re- 
garded as absolutely decisive against the Isaianic theor}^.'^ 
The idea of a reign of Jehovah and his righteous nation, 
ransomed and restored to its inheritance, but without any 
direct reference to a king of the house of David, is to be 
found in Isaiah's earliest prophecies, such as chapters i. ii. 
and vi. : this idea is then expanded and embodied in 
several of his subsequent prophecies, in the exj3ectation 
and promise of such an actual descendant and repre- 
sentative of David ; but in several other prophecies, and 
especially perhaps in chapters xxiv. — xxvii. and xxxiv. 
xxxv., the same idea re-appears in that first form, and this 
is afterwards more fully developed in the last portion of the 
Book. The difference between the earliest and latest pro- 
phecies does not amount to contradiction or incompatibility, 

* The Book of Isaiah, Introduction, p. xxiii. ' Historical tradition' would 
be more accurate than ' theory,' in this place. 



350 



FROM MESSIANIC BELIEFS : 



even when these are contrasted only with each other ; 
while it becomes comparatively unimportant if we recognize 
the existence of the intermediate links ; and not so to re- 
cognize them is, in fact, to exclude them because they are 
such links. But neither is there any sufficient proof (such 
as is supposed by the critics whose views I am now con- 
sidering) that the captivity did produce any great change 
in the Messianic beliefs and expectations of the Jewish 
nation from those which they had held before. The his- 
torical evidence, such as it is, is rather the other way. 
The feeble colony which returned to rebuild Jerusalem 
by permission of Cyrus, returned under the leadership of 
Zerubbabel, the nearest surviving representative of the 
house of David, and he seems to embody the idea of 
the Messianic king to the contemporary prophets Haggai 
and Zecheriah, in as far as that idea is present to them."* 
And though, in fact, the royal family of David never did 
permanently recover its old position in the state, yet the 
uniform language of the writers of the New Testament 
implies that the expectation of a personal Messiah of the 
house of David was not less strong then than it had been 
in the days of Hezekiah. If the Messianic ideas of the 
latter chapters of Isaiah are to be connected with some 
historical period, it must be that of times — Christian or 
Jewish — after the final destruction of the Jewish polity ; 
and the sense of this is shown in the interpretations given 
to them since then both by Christians and Jews. But it 
would be more correct to say that these ideas belong not 
to any one age, but are proper to the prophetic genius 
and inspiration in all times. How they can be supposed 
to have been discovered to Isaiah in a rational and intel- 
ligible manner, I shall endeavour to show hereafter. 

I believe the matter-of-fact investigator will come to 

* Haggai (ii. 21 — 23) tells Zerubbabel that when Jehovah shakes heaven 
and earth, and destroys the strength of the kingdoms the heathen, he will 
take him — Zerubbabel— his servant whom he has chosen, and will make 
him as a signet. And Zechariah, though he gives Jesua the high priest a 
position of importance, and calls him ' the Branch ' (iii. 8, vi. 12) ; yet he 
also recognizes Zerubbabel (iv. 1 — 14)^8 endowed by the sevenfold spirit of 
Jehovah, which Isaiah had declared to be the endowment of the rod of the 
stem of Jesse (xi. 1—3), and, apparently, as one of the two anointed ones 
(Jeshua being the other) who stand by the Lord of the whole earth. 



FROM THE NAME OF CYRUS. 



35i 



the conclusion, that the first argument — the argument 
from an apparently contemporary tone and atmosphere — 
is that in which the real strength of the case lies ; and 
that the word ' Cyrus ' is its main source and support, just 
as the word 'Babylon' was on another occasion. What- 
ever is the difficulty from the historical tone of those 
passages I have quoted or referred to, its chief vitality is 
in this name. The ingenious explanation of it as a title 
and not a proper name, proposed by Hensler and adopted 
by Hengstenberg, Havernick and Plumptre, has been 
given up by the latest writers on that side ; for indeed, 
though ingenious it is. not really tenable.'" And they 
have returned to the older hypothesis of a miraculous 
prediction, both as to the name of the Persian king, and 
as to all the other descriptions or allusions which seem to 
refer specifically to the times of the Captivity. Between 
those who do, and those who do not, accept this last 
hypothesis there is no common ground of argument. 

* This is, that the name of Cyrus, which the Greek historians derived 
from the Persian word for ' Sun,' was a Persian title, analogous to those of 
the Egyptian Pharaoh and Ptolemy, the Philistian Ahimelech, the Amale- 
kitish Agag, and the Roman Csesar ; and that it was known as such to Isaiah, 
either from Persian travellers or the Medes in Sennacherib's army, so that he 
would have meant no more than Jeremiah expresses by ' Jehovah hath raised 
up the spirit of the kings of the Medes : ' — that this explanation is confirmed 
by the statement of Herodotus and Strabo that Cyrus had another name 
before he ascended the throne ; and by the fact that a much later Persian 
king, Bahram, was surnamed Kur : — and that it is possible that the royal 
author of the proclamation given by Ezra may have adopted the title the 
more readily from the mention of it in these prophecies of Isaiah, which, 
according to Josephus, were shown him by the Jews. This conjecture that 
Cyrus was a royal title, and not an individual name, is, moreover, supported 
by the evidence (quoted from Burnouf by Havernick) that some such title 
as Coresh, taken to mean the sun, was very widely extended among the 
Arian races, and adopted both by Persian and Indian dynasties : and Sir 
Henry Rawlinson's opinion may be adduced on the same side; for while 
he doubts — and Lassen denies as beyond any doubt — the connection between 
Coresh, or Kurush, and Khur (the Persian for 'sun'),- he 'compares the 
former with the Sanskrit Ktiruh. or Kurtis, which was probably a popular 
title among the Arian race before the separation of the Median and Persian 
branches,' and adds, that ' the Kuru race of ancient India, descended from 
the famous Ktiruh, the son of Samavarana, is too well known to require 
notice.' And then this explanation is combined with the old view, by the 
argument, that if we have no right to suppose that Isaiah did or could blindly 
predict a mere unmeaning proper name of an individual two hundred years 
before his appearance, yet it is in accordance with the Christian idea of 
prophetic inspiration to believe that he could utter such a prediction of a name 
thus significant of the nation and the office of him who was to bear it. — 
Hengstenberg's Christologg, translated by Keith. Havernick, Einleitung in d. 
A. T. II. ii. 164, ff. Plumptre's Biblical Studies, Old Age of Isaiah. Journal 
of the Asiatic Society, vol. xi. p. 112. 



352 



ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR 



Those who supplement every defect of proof by an 
appeal to a miraculous authority which their opponents 
do not recognize, cannot expect an impartial hearing for 
such of their arguments as are critical : they will inevitably 
be thought unworthy of complete examination and reply 
and this in fact has been the treatment which such argu- 
ments for the genuineness of these chapters have hitherto 
received. But let us grant that Isaiah had no such 
miraculous power ; that he could not, and did not, pre- 
dict either the name of Cyrus or any of the events of the 
Captivity which could only be known to contemporaries ; 
and that any passages in these chapters which undoubtedly 
imply such contemporary knowledge must be referred to a 
contemporary, or still later, origin ; and then we may ask 
whether the hypothesis that the old text of Isaiah was 
revised during the exile for practical use as a book of warn- 
ing, consolation, and devotion by the Jews of that time, 
and perhaps again afterwards by merely literary editors 
who desired to give the text a decidedly orthodox 
character when the notion of miraculous prediction had 
taken the place of a truer and higher knowledge of what 
prophecy actually was — whether this hypothesis does not 
meet the difficulties of the case better than that of these 
chapters being the entirely new work of an otherwise un- 
known prophet. It respects that historical evidence which 
is as good as that which we have for the authorship of 
most ancient books : it appeals to internal evidence which 
has never been really explained, but still remains a stum- 
bling-block on the contrary hypothesis ; it restricts conjec- 
ture instead of giving it free scope ; and if it requires a 
larger view of the genius of Isaiah and of the nature of 
Hebrew prophecy, this is no objection to it, so long as we 
remain within the bounds of reasonable probability and 
consistency. Our conception of Hebrew prophecy will, no 
doubt, be somewhat different according as we take these 
chapters to have been written in the days of Hezekiah or 
in those of the Exile : but it will be just as reasonable and 
intelligible a conception in the former case as in the latter. 
Though Hebrew prophecy, as I have already said, is a form 
of human life and thought which no longer survives in its 



OF THE AUTHORSHIP OF ISAIAH. 



ancient shape, we can still understand the possibility of its 
existence, and recover something of its appearance : but if 
we are thus to re-construct that vanished form we must do 
so by an induction from all the facts known to us, and not 
by selecting some to the exclusion of others. Our idea of 
it would be other than it is, if none of the writings of 
Isaiah had come down to us ; and if these later chapters 
somewhat modify and enlarge our views as to its nature, if 
they are admitted to be by Isaiah, this is in itself no reason 
for doubting their genuineness. 

The first reason for adhering as far as possible to the 
historical tradition as to the authorship of Isaiah is that it 
is the historical tradition. The rules of ordinary criticism 
require us to accept Isaiah as the author until it is shown 
that he cannot have been so : we are not to begin by treat- 
ing the book as anonymous, and conjecturing who its 
author may have been. Then an examination of par- 
ticulars shows that, whatever we must grant of certain 
passages, the general matter of the discourse may be under- 
stood as that of a prophet in Jerusalem in the days of 
Hezekiah, and need not be taken to be by a Jew living in 
Babylon during the Exile. If we except those passages 
as interpolations, there is nothing unreasonable in taking 
these chapters as Isaiah's vision of that captivity which he 
had foretold to Hezekiah as about to come on his family 
and nation, and for the picturing of which the accounts of 
those who had already suffered the like captivity, after the 
invasions of Sargon and Sennacherib, would have supplied 
him with complete information. While the earlier pro- 
phecies were doubtless first spoken, and afterwards written 
down, there is every appearance that these latter chapters 
are an original literary composition ; and if we allow for 
the differences between oral and written discourse, and for 
the interval of time between the earliest and latest of such 
discourses, probably extending over fifty years, and for the 
originality of genius which does not servilely repeat itself, 
we may fairly say that these chapters are in the manner of 
Isaiah, whose habits of language as well as thought, may 
be recognized perpetually, with no greater differences than 
are found between the earlier and later works of Plato, 

A A 



354- 



CONTEMPORARY ALLUSIONS : 



Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, or 
indeed any other author in whose case we have the 
materials for the comparison/" The apparent allusions 
to Isaiah's own times and circumstances are also many. 
Such are the comparison of Zion to a bride whose name 
shall be Hephzibah, which was the name of Hezekiah's 
wife, and the mother of his heir ;t the words of comfort 
to the eunuchs, $ compared with the prediction of the 
lot of the royal family ;§ the argument from the ritual 
sacrifices, which has no meaning if addressed to those to 
whom it was no longer possible to perform the temple- 
service because there was no temple ;|| and the description 
of Zion, whose watchmen are dumb and drunken, and 
her righteous men taken away by death, while she, the 
sorceress and harlot, sends her messengers and presents 
to the king afar off, and debases herself to hell :1[ — words 
which make us think, on the one hand, of Isaiah's former 
denunciations of the national idolatries, the worldly princes 
and prophets, their persecutions, their ' covenants with 
death and hell,' the embassy to Egypt, and the alliance 
with Merodach-Baladan ; and on the other, of the histo- 
rian's description of the reign of Manasseh, when these 
national crimes were reproduced in their wonted forms, 
and would have been already foreseen by the prophet. 
The denunciations in the latter chapters of the selfish 
and idolatrous people, the anticipations of their punish- 
ment and reformation, the pictures of their restoration, 
and of Jerusalem as the centre to which all nations will 
turn, are the exact counterparts of those in Isaiah's 
earliest prophecies ; and if there are some passages in 
which the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple are 

* Professor Stanley Leathes ( Witness of the Old Testament to Christ) gives 
a large number of phrases more or less common to the earlier and later 
chapters, and more or less peculiar to Isaiah. Among these are 'The 
Holy One of Israel,' which occurs twelve times in the earlier and thirteen 
times in the later chapters ; and ' The Lord of Hosts,' which occurs six 
times in the later chapters. Professor Birks {Commentary on the Book of 
Isaiah) gives a further list of such phrases. These and the other proofs of 
the authorship of Isaiah are discussed with much learning and ability by 
Pro l essor Delitzsch, in the Appendix to Drechsler's Der Prophet Jesaja, uebersetzt 
■and erklurt. Dr. Delitzsch refers to, but does not give at length these argu- 
ments, in his own Commentary, of which there is an English translation. 

f lxii. 4. % Ivi- 3 - § xxxix. 7. 

|! xliii. 22—28. ^ lvi. 9; lvii. 11. 



OTHER EVIDENCE. 



355 



described in words which seem historical rather than 
prophetic, there are others in which the future glorious 
•position of the Holy City and House among the nations 
is foretold in language not less apparently that of a 
prophet who had imagined but never known these in 
ruins, and who forgets the one vision as the other rises 
before him. 

There are passages in the prophecies of Zephaniah, and 
very numerous ones in those of Jeremiah,*" which are so 
like portions of these later chapters, that they must have 
a common origin, while they appear in those writers in so 
fragmentary a form that it is difficult not to believe that 
they were the copyists, and that the other had preceded 
them in a composition as artistic as theirs is the contrary. 
The other alternative is possible, but I think an exami- 
nation of the passages will show that it is the less 
probable in the present case. Again, we need an expla- 
nation of the anomaly that a genius not inferior to that 
of Isaiah should appear in a period when Hebrew litera- 
ture had nearly arrived at its extinction, through a gradual 
decay, the stages of which are as easily traceable as in that of 
any other nation ; and that having appeared, his name and 
personality should have been lost, when those of Ezra 
Haggai, and Zechariah were preserved. And, lastly, it must 
be objected to the hypothesis of the non-genuineness of 
these chapters, that they leave Isaiah's character an inex- 
plicable puzzle. Such a man as his unquestioned works 
show him to have been, would not have been content with 
the desponding though pious resignation of Hezekiah : 
nature would indeed have ' told her first lie in her noblest 
creature,' if Isaiah could thus terminate his fifty years' 
ministry. 

Now, though objections of this sort are worth little 
against the genuineness of a text which has the fact 
of historical existence in its favour, they are not unim- 
portant when they stand in the way of our accepting a con- 
jectural emendation of that text. For the first essential of 
such an emendation is, that it shall be itself free from all 
internal difficulty, and so far thoroughly suitable for 

* Zephaniah ii. 15; iii. 10. Jeremiah, passim. 
A A 2 



356 



A THIRD HYPOTHESIS. 



taking the place of what is not capable of explanation, 
as it stands. And therefore, after applying these and the 
like tests, I am compelled to conclude that this theory of 
the non-genuineness of these chapters, and of their date 
being that of the Captivity, is far from being proved ; and 
that it is worth while to look farther into that third 
hypothesis which I have already stated, though it has 
hitherto found few, and those comparatively obscure, critics 
to support it. 

This hypothesis requires some other explanation of the 
presence of the word or name Coresh,"" than those already 
considered. And here it is important to notice that the 
story of Josephus that this prophecy was read by Cyrus, 
who was thereby induced to restore the Jewish nation, is 
not affirmed, but in fact contradicted, by the statement of 
Ezra — that the word of Jehovah by the mouth of Jere- 
miah might be fulfilled, Jehovah stirred up the spirit of 
Cyrus, king of Persia.' The author of the Book of Ezra 
could have known no direct prophecy of Cyrus as the 
deliverer, either by Isaiah or any later prophet who could 
be quoted with authority, or he would have referred to 
him instead of Jeremiah. The fair inference is that no 
prediction — ancient or modern — which named Cyrus as 
the deliverer, was then known ; and that the story of 
Josephus is either his own invention, or derived by him 
from some comparatively recent tradition. Moreover, the 
resemblance, which is thought to be so striking between the 
description of Coresh in the words before us, and the 
historical accounts of the Persian king, is not the whole 
case. For plausible as it seems to understand one ' called, 
and named, by the God of Israel, though he has not known 
him,' to be a heathen, though providential, instrument 
of Israel's deliverance : yet these expressions, and still 
more their context, are so like, or even identical with, 
those of a number of other passages which it requires 
the utmost forcing to apply to Cyrus, that if the former 
are decided to indicate a contemporary Persian king- — or 
indeed any other than a national Personage — the latter 

* The same word as stands for Cyrus in the hooks of Ezra, Chronicles and 
Daniel, only that all these add ' king of Persia.' 



CORESH AND JEHOVAH'S SERVANT. 357 

become an inextricable puzzle : and the commentators are 
never able to agree whether they refer to Gyrus, to Israel, 
or to the Messiah. This will be shown more clearly by 
some instances : — » 



. CoRESH.. 

That saith to Coresh, he is my 
shepherd, and shall perform all my 
pleasure : even saying to Jerusalem, 
thou shalt be built, and to the temple, 
thou shalt be founded : 



Thus saith Jehovah to his Anoint- 
ed, to Coresh, whose right hand I 
have holden : 



To tread down nations before him, 
and I will loose the loins of kings : 



I will go before thee, and make 
the crooked places straight : I will 
give thee the treasures of darkness, 
and hidden riches of secret places : 

That thou may est know that I, 
Jehovah which call thee by thy 
name, am the God of Israel : 

For Jacob my servant's sake, and 
Israel mine elect, I have even called 
thee by thy name ; I have surnamed 
thee, though thou hast not known 
me : 



I have raised him up in righteous- 
ness, and I will direct all his ways : 
he shall build my city, and he shall 
let go my captives, not fur price nor 
for reward. 



Israel; JehovaJi's Servant. 

He shall feed his flock like a shep- 
herd, xl. 11. Thou shouldest be my 
servant to raise up the tribes of 
Jacob. ... I will give thee for a 
covenant to the people, to establish 
the earth, to cause to inherit the deso- 
late heritages . . their pastures shall 
be in all high places, xlix. 6 — 9. I 
have created him for my glory. Thou 
art my servant, 0 Israel, in whom I 
will be glorified, xlix. 3. 

Behold my servant whom I up- 
hold, I have put my spirit upon him. 
xlii. 1. The spirit of the Lord 
Jehovah is upon me because Jehovah 
hath anointed me. lxi. 1 . I will uphold 
thee with the right hand of my righ- 
teousness, xli. 10. I Jehovah have 
called thee .... and will hold thine 
hand. xlii. 6. 

I have made of thee a sharp thresh- 
ing instrument, xli. 15. Kings shall 
see and arise, princes also shall wor- 
ship, xlix. 7. 

I will lead them in paths that they 
have not known : I will make dark- 
ness light before them, and crooked 
things straight, xlii. 16. Ye shall 
eat the riches of the Gentiles, 
lxi. 6. 

I have called thee by thy name 
.... I am Jehovah thy God, the 
Holy One of Israel, xliii. 1, 3* 

Thou Israel art my servant .... 
thou whom I have taken from the 
ends of the earth, and called thee 
from the chief men thereof, xli. 9. 
Who is blind, but my servant, or 
deaf, as my messenger that I sent ? 
xlii. 19. I said, behold, behold me, 
to a nation that was not called by my 
name. lxv. 1. I will bring the blind 
by a way that they knew not. xlii. 16. 

That they might be called. Trees 
of righteousness, the planting of 
Jehovah .... they shall build the 
old wastes .... the former desola- 
tions .... the waste cities .... 
I will direct their work in truth, and 
I will make an everlasting covenant 
with them .... Behold his reward 
is with him, and his recompense be- 
fore him. lxi. 3, 4, 8; lxii. 11. 



358 



MOLLER AND SCHEGG 



If the reader considers not only these instances, but the 
whole tone and spirit of their context ; and not least, the 
use of the phrase ' His Anointed,' which, with one very 
doubtful exception, is appropriated to the kings, prophets, 
priests, and patriarchs of the chosen nation of Israel ; I 
think he will agree with me, that such interchange and 
fusion of thoughts and images in describing Israel, the 
Messiah, and a heathen deliverer, are inexplicable in the 
mouth of a Jewish prophet of any age. No one could 
have attributed to a heathen king the character of the 
Messiah, and even of Jehovah himself. 

The first suggestion that these difficulties, as well as the 
whole question of the authorship of Isaiah, must be met 
by setting aside the supposition that the king of Persia is 
indicated at all in this prophecy, is found, I believe, in the 
Academical Essay of J. U. Moller, a Danish theologian. 
He attempts, indeed, to maintain the verbal accuracy of 
the text by a new explanation of the word ' Coresh,' which 
Hebrew scholars are agreed in refusing to accept ; but his 
main argument that the name of the king of Persia here 
makes no real sense, seems to me to be sound/" The verbal 
difficulty is met by supposing a gloss or interpolation ; and 
this is the view of Schegg, who treats the word in chapter 
xlv. i. as a gloss ; and upon xliv. 2 8 says that the last 
verse of the chapter does not belong to the prophet him- 
self, but is an explanatory addition of the Synagogue from 
the time of the Exile. He maintains that the verse does 
not properly suit the context, but is only a repetition of 

* Be Authentic Oracuhrum Esaiai. Havnice, 1825. — As Moller's Essay 
is very rare, and his method is ingenious and suggestive, though its specific 
conclusion is not accepted, the reader may like to see his argument stated. 
After urging the improbahility that Isaiah should have exercised a power of 
prediction which Jesus himself never showed, and that the name of a Persian 
king, though not that of the Saviour of the world, should have been thus 
predicted ; and after showing the want of probability and coherence in the 
sense which it is now necessary to give to various passages in which Cyrus is 
supposed to be named or referred to ; he concludes that the word is no proper 
name at all, and that it is as much by accident that Isaiah here uses a word 
consisting of the same letters with which the Jews afterwards wrote the 
name of Cyrus, as it is that he calls the mother of Immanuel <7Db2? ' Alma,' 
in chap. vii. 14, where no one finds a prediction of the ' alma mater ' of the 
Church of Rome. He then proceeds to inquire what is the meaning of the 
word, in the same way as scholars have to determine the meaning of so many 
other words,, not only in Hebrew but in other languages, by reference to 
kindred roots, analogous forms, and by the sense of the context. This sense, 



AS TO THE WORD CORESH. 



359 



verse 26 specially applied by the interpolator to Cyrus. 
And as to the general probability of such an interpolation 
he observes that ' it is a mistake to suppose that the books 
of the Bible were like a metal casting poured out at once 
from the crucible and never altered : the Synagogue looked 
on them as its property, and never hesitated to finish them 
up. as an artist does his work : the opposite stiff notion of 
the integrity of the Canon involves us in endless critical 
difficulties as well as in false conceptions of inspiration.'"" 

I do not pretend to undo the work of ' the Synagogue,' 
nor to restore the original text of Isaiah ; nor do I think 
any such reconstruction can be other than conjectural and 
uncertain. But the question whether our existing text is 
not a work of Isaiah, revised and re-edited during or after 
the Exile, and not a new work of that date, seems to me 
at least to claim a more complete discussion than it has 
yet received. s If a man will begin with certainties, he 
shall end in doubts ; but if he will be content to begin 
with doubts, he shall end in certainties,' says Bacon. And 

he says, requires the word to indicate the people of Israel : and he explains 
it — EHIS — to be, by metathesis for "H£H2, the participle Benoni of the root 
*lt^3 to be right, and so to mean, like the same participle of the cognate 
upright or righteous. He thus brings the word into connection with f^PI 
(Jeshurun, as the diminutive of endearment for Jashur, the Upright) in verse 
2 of the same xlivth chapter in which we have Coresh ; and with the same 
word ('make straight,' or ' direct,' in our Version), in verses 2 and 13 

of the next chapter, as well as in xl. 3, 4. The metathesis he justifies by the 
constant usage of the Hebrew, and suggests that it may have been here 
adopted in order to avoid the inconvenience of one word ending, and the next 
beginning, with "1. 

* Der Prophet Isaiah, iibersetzt und echldrt von Peter Schegg, Miinchen, 
1850. Haneberg inclines to taking the like view. — Geschichte der biblischen 
Offenbarung, p. 303. And a distinguished English Hebrew scholar, though 
quite decided against the Isaian authorship of these chapters, tells me that he 
is nevertheless disposed to think the name ' Cyrus' a gloss in xlv. 1, whatever 
may be the case in xliv. 28. He compares it with the name 'David,' in 
Psalm xviii. 50, which the learned and cautious Redding and Hupfeldt con- 
sider to be a gloss. 

The observations of Dean Milman, while expressing bis dissent from the 
learned German critics who attribute a late origin to the Pentateuch, are 
applicable here. He says [History of the Jews, I. p. 132, 3rd edition) : ' But 
there is one criticism which I trust it may not be presumptuous to submit to 
the critical school. There seems to me a fatal fallacy in the groundwork of 
much of their argument. Their minute inferences, and conclusions drawn 
from slight premises seem to presuppose an integrity and perfect accuracy in 
the existing text, not in itself probable, and certainly utterly inconsistent 
with the general principles of their criticisms. They are in this respect, and 
in this alone, almost at one with the most rigid adherents of verbal inspi- 
ration.' 



360 



DOUBTS AND CERTAINTIES. 



the one guide through these doubts to certainties, is an 
impartial temper : and this will be the easier to preserve, 
if we are on our guard against the ambition of acquiring 
complete knowledge while partial alone is possible for us. 
And I would remind the reader that in the case before us, 
it will be better — he will find more of the satisfaction which 
comes of real knowledge and nothing else — if he suspends 
his judgment till he can really see to the bottom of the diffi- 
culty with his own eyes, and does not attempt to persuade 
himself by partial statements and arguments that he has 
found a complete solution which his cooler judgment will 
disavow. 

Yet the positive, matter-of-fact, method has served us 
hitherto : taking this book as we found it, and for what it 
professed to be, and the arrangement of its contents as an 
integral part of the text, no less needful to be studied 
than the grammar and logic of the sentences, yet ascertain- 
ing at every step whether we were on firm ground, we 
have hitherto found the road plain enough : and while 
the critics do point out some apparent indications that our 
path now ends in what the haze of their speculations can- 
not make me call other than a sheer precipice, there is 
still a good hope that this seeming precipice is only the 
arrival of the road at the brow of a hill, from which, when 
we get to it, the view will be clearer and more extensive, 
and the forward road more plain than ever. Let us then 
return to the book as it is, and hear its own story, as far 
as we can make it out. 

We have found, on examination, that there is no valid 
reason for doubting, that there is satisfactory reason for 
deciding, that all the prophecies hitherto under our con- 
sideration, are the genuine writings of Isaiah ; and that 
each of them stands in its proper place : and from their 
contents we have gradually obtained a distinct acquain - 
tance with the prophet's times, with his personal character, 
and with the nature and course of his political career. 
Uzziah's able administration, both foreign and domestic, 
with enough of military discipline, and actual warfare, to 
give manly energy to the people, yet with a still greater 
care for agriculture, trade, and commerce by land and sea, 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD. 



361 



had raised Judah to a high point of material prosperity ; 
and the impulse thus imparted to it continued during the 
reign of his successor Jotham, whose nobles and statesmen, 
like himself, not only inherited their fathers' political 
maxims and habits along with their wealth and honours, 
but had also been trained in their practical school. But 
their prosperity became merely material. Their morality 
was often no more than an employment of the forms 
and the ministers of the law to effect iniquitous and 
criminal objects ; and their religion a performance of the 
mosaic ritual, by men who did not conceal the sceptical 
opinions, or the superstitious idolatries, which had taken 
the place of a living faith in their minds, accordingly as 
these happened to be intellectual or formal. Consequently, 
when the third generation — that of Ahaz — succeeded, it 
was too completely enervated by luxury and vice to main- 
tain the traditional policy even against such feeble enemies 
as Ephraim, Syria, or Philistia, and still less to make head 
against the truly formidable power which had begun again 
to threaten the world from Assyria. A crisis, or judgment 
day, had arrived, in which the general corruption and 
depravity must be punished, or else truth and righteous- 
ness would be permanently superseded by iniquity, and 
selfishness, and a mere kingdom of evil. And the sen- 
tence then, as always, was executed through the provi- 
dential coincidence of this attack from the scourge of God 
with the moment when long-continued vice had produced 
that internal weakness and imbecility which are its proper 
fruits ; according to the law which has united sin and its 
punishment in inevitable sequence, and provided that the 
loss of ordinary intelligence and ability to avoid the latter 
shall be one of the links of the chain. The accumulated 
wealth of the country was exhausted in buying, or rather 
trying to buy, the protection, or the forbearance, of the 
Assyrian hordes, who not only wasted the land year after 
year, when it was cultivated, but prevented its cultivation 
by carrying the inhabitants into slavery, and especially to 
Babylon, the people of which seem, according to Micah, 
Isaiah's contemporary, as well as to himself, to have taken 
a chief part in the oppression of Israel. But reformation 



362 



COHERENCE OF EARLIER 



was the end, and punishment only the means, — the anger 
of a Father not only ready, but longing, to forgive his 
children, and to receive them again to his heart : and 
while the old vicious generation was thus gradually rooted 
out, a new one, of which Isaiah, Hezekiah, and Eliakim, 
were the leeaders, grew up under the salutary though 
trying discipline of national humiliation and suffering. 
And when this discipline had done all that it could do for 
that time ; when God had by it taught his people all that 
they were capable of learning from it, without being 
wholly consumed in the process ; and when he had at 
least secured a permanent result for the world, if not for a 
people too perverse to partake therein ; he delivered Judah 
from its great oppressors, and restored it to peace "and 
prosperity under its king. 

Men are the agents, God himself being present to direct 
them, in the accomplishment of the laws of his moral 
government of the world : and it was a main part of 
Isaiah's mission to ' make the heart of this people fat, and 
their ears heavy, and to shut their eyes, lest they should 
see and understand, and convert and be healed.' His de- 
precatory question ' Lord, how long,' is illustrated by his 
habitual practice of immediately following up his warnings 
and denunciations with consolatory promises : and if it 
ever seemed to him that the melancholy task was imposed 
by an unpitying sternness, he would have learnt that it was 
not so, when it was adequately explained by the events 
of after years. These showed that, whatever worthy the 
national reformation under Hezekiah possessed, it did owe 
to the long continuance of the previous punishment ; and 
that, even as it was, this had not been enough to make 
any permanent impression, but that in simple fact the 
people had been allowed to ' convert and be healed ' too 
soon, and that the whole process had to be gone through 
again, with redoubled severity. And while the short nar- 
rative we have lately been considering in the thirty-ninth 
chapter, tells us how unflinchingly Isaiah threw down, 
with his own hands, the structure of national prospects 
which he had been building up during a ministry of near 
fifty years, the subsequent chapters, to the end of the 



AND LATER PROPHECIES. 



363 



book, show him deliberately raising it again, in a manner 
exactly consistent with his whole previous character and 
teaching. And consistent alike in its resemblances and its 
differences : for while the man and the prophet with whom 
we have become so familiar in .the past prophecies, meets 
us throughout the new, in his old individual shape, we 
recognize and identify him, not more by his faith and 
hopes, his philosophy and imagination, and his whole 
method of looking at men and things, and God's govern- 
ment of both, than by his wonted exercise of that prero- 
gative of a man of genius, and a prophet of God, by which 
he adapts himself, and his teaching, to the new necessities 
which this new experience had revealed. And though I 
do not forget that there is no more perfect unity than 
that which results from the work of successive labourers 
actuated by the same idea, of which the Book of Psalms, 
the Bible itself, and, in another kind, the building of York 
cathedral, are instances ; and though it would be possible 
to make out a very good case in favour of such being the 
unity of the book before us, if we only had a foundation 
of fact to begin with ; still I appeal with confidence to the 
judgment of every thorough and matter-of-fact student of 
our text, whether there is not complete consistency and 
coherency in the mind and writings of the one man 
Isaiah ; and whether the theory which divides him into an 
Isaiah and a ' Pseudo-Isaiah,' or ' Great Unnamed,' does 
not deprive the former, if not also the latter, half, of much 
more than half its meaning. To myself it almost seems 
that, if these latter prophecies had been lost, some Cuvier 
or Owen of human science might be conceived restoring 
them in their actual shape, from the indications of their 
law and germ in his earlier writings. And, on the other 
hand, I am irresistibly reminded of the Jewish tradition, 
that Isaiah was sawn asunder by those who misunderstood, 
and denied, his real office and powers : — and think how that 
tradition has been, by a reversal of the ordinary process, 
provided with its philosophical idea, and transformed into a 
regular myth, after 2000 years of mere historical existence. 
The ' years that bring the philosophic mind"" had come 

* I have already quoted this line from Wordsworth's ' Ode,' in connection 



ISAIAH'S ANTICIPATIONS 



to Isaiah, with the last qualification needed to enable him 
to complete one of the few works which are ' not for an 
age, but for all time.' He had, indeed, shown himself, by 
what he had done, well prepared for what yet remained. 
If he had reason, after delivering Jehovah's last message to 
Hezekiah, to exclaim with the Psalmist, ' My spirit is over- 
whelmed within me ; my heart within me is desolate ; ' 
he knew how to add, ' I remember the days of old ; I 
meditate on all thy works ; I muse on the work of thy 
hands.' * And now that he had understood, and une- 
quivocally declared in the name of Jehovah, and as his 
prophet, that his early warnings that the cities of Judah 
should be without inhabitant, and the houses without 
man, and that Jehovah should remove men far away, and 
there should be a great forsaking in the land, had not 
been fulfilled in the late years of calamity ; that there 
was still to come a captivity, not of many inhabitants, but 
of the nation and its king ; and a destruction, not of 
villages and towns, but of Jerusalem and the temple, 
when, in the words of his contemporary, * Zion should be 
ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem become heaps, and the 
mountain of the temple a forest, and the Daughter of 
Zion, the nation itself, should go forth out of the city, 
even to Babylon ;'t he would be no less earnest to discover 
and to declare when, and how, were to be realized his own 
corresponding promises that 'Zion should be redeemed 
with judgment, and her converts with righteousness ; that 
she should be called the city of righteousness, the faithful 
city ; that in her should reign a king of the house of 
David, of the increase of whose government and peace 
there should be no end, and of which the blessings, spiritual 
no less than temporal, should not be limited to Israel, but 
extended to all nations, who should go up to the mountain 

with this subject : hut the whole Ode, including the Title and the Motto, 
may be read as a most instructive comment upon the whole spirit of prophecy, 
as exhibited by Isaiah ; and especially as to the relation between these latter 
chapters and the earlier ones. Our seer, like the Hebrew one, teaches us 
how to connect 4 the pansy at our feet ' with ' truths that wake to perish 
never ; ' and to understand how ' our noisy years ' may ' seem moments in the 
being of the eternal Silence.' 
* Psalm cxliii. 4, 5. 

f The passage has been already quoted on the other side : the reader 
should consider its bearing both ways. 



DISAPPOINTED, YET FULFILLED. 365 



of Jeliovali and to the house of the Gocl of Jacob to be 
taught of his ways, and to walk in his paths, and whom 
the Lokd of hosts should bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt, 
my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, 
mine inheritance.' And the latter half of the book tells 
us the result : — that the human and finite ideals of his 
youth, which he had expected to see realized in the fruits 
of his own ministry and Hezekiah's reign, had failed (as all 
such ideals do) like the flower of the field, though not till 
they had served their purpose both for his countrymen and 
himself ; but that to replace them there had been mean- 
while maturing, and now was revealed to his purged and 
illumined eye, God's divine and infinite ideal of the desti- 
nies of Israel and mankind. His faith and hopes, and the 
whole tenour of his teaching, had from the first been based, 
not upon the merits of his nation but upon God's original 
choice of them without any previous merit on their part, 
upon his good- will towards them, and upon his faithfulness 
in keeping the covenant he had made with them, however 
they might break it : and this purpose of goodness, of free 
grace, must remain still, and could as little be overcome 
by new sins as by the old ones. And yet what could any 
kings and prophets do more, nay, what could God himself do, 
that he had not done, to effect it in the face of such inve- 
terate resistance, and even incapacity ? The answer, we 
may be sure, came to Isaiah through that diligent inquiry 
with which St. Peter, who entered so heartily into the 
spirit of the great and good of his own people, tells us it 
was the habit of the prophets to £ search what, or what 
manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did 
signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of 
Christ, and the glory that should follow.'"" He would ask 
himself what, more than he had hitherto supposed, was 
contained in those predictions which he had been moved 
to utter t when he and his disciples were, not only sharing 
the calamities which overwhelmed the nation at the begin- 
ning of the reign of Ahaz, but also bearing the contempt 
and persecutions of their unbelieving countrymen — predic- 
tions, that they were to look, for relief and triumph, to the 

* 1 Peter i. 10, 11. f Chapters viii. ix 



3 66 



PROPHECY NATIONAL, 



birth of a Child of the house of David, whose name should be 
called ' Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God :' and thus 
meditating upon these, and all the rest of his past prophecies, 
he would have been — we see that he actually was — at last 
prepared to receive, and to make known, a still more 
glorious revelation of .God's counsels than had yet been 
made to him. This declared that the invisible Loed and 
Guide of the nation would come in his own person and 
effect that deliverance which his most pious representa- 
tives were unequal to accomplish, by bearing the sins 
of the nation as they could not be borne by any other 
king or prophet, however devoted to suffer, and to do all 
things for the nation's sake : and that out of this deliver- 
ance should spring, not a mere restoration and re-establish- 
ment of the kingdom of Israel under the Branch of the 
Stem of Jesse, but a universal kingdom, and one which 
in order to be universal would be spiritual, established 
in the hearts and lives of its subjects; and, therefore, 
no longer dependent on outward circumstances of national 
peace and prosperity for its development ; but able, if 
need were, to found, and continually expand, itself, in 
spite, nay by help, of the absence of these things. 

The idea of the whole Book of Isaiah is the same — God's 
government of Israel and mankind according to the laws 
which he has given for their relations to himself and to each 
other : but in the first part Isaiah is always seeking for, and 
setting forth, this idea in the events of his own times ; 
and in the second half he contemplates the idea in itself, 
and only embodies it in such shadowy anticipations of the 
future as his imagination can project from the facts and 
probabilities of his own time; though into these shadowy 
forms he throws himself so completely, that it is often very 
hard for us not to think that, they are the realities, and he 
— Isaiah — imaginary. This, I believe, is the real clue to 
that mixture of visionary indistinctness and historical 
literalness, which enables the advocates of the Pseudo- 
Isaian theory, and their opponents, each to make out so 
good a case : and, if so, what the reader wants is, not to 
decide between two rival sets of arguments, either of which 
may any day be replaced by another which the old victor 



YET SPIRITUAL AND UNIVERSAL. 367 



cannot resist, but b} r study of the book itself to acquire, 
if possible, the power of putting himself in the prophet's 
position, and looking at things as he looked at them. He 
must try and realize what Pope meant when, with a poet's 
feeling, he described Isaiah as ' the bard rapt into future 
times ;' and what St. Peter, who gives us the true theo- 
logical, as the other does the true human side, meant by 
saying, that ' it was revealed to the prophets, that not 
unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the 
things which are now preached to us in the gospel, with 
the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven ? ' * This reali- 
zation is difficult, and can only be hoped for by help 
of that same guidance which led the Apostle thither, 
and which always supplies — even to the most prosaic- — so 
much of the poetic faculty as the end demands. No mere 
logical or literary criticism will bring a man far on this 
road, still less do as a substitute for his actually taking the 
journey himself ; but, perhaps, some of the obstacles at 
first setting off may be cleared away by such considerations 
as I have already suggested on the present, and previous 
occasions, and to which I now venture to make one or two 
additions. 

The progress of the universe under God's plan has 
brought us to a very different position, and point of view, 
from that where the ancient world stood : we too have a 
future before us (and in these very days a wider and more 
glorious future is opening than mankind has yet seen), 
but much of their future has become our past ; and we 
look back on great accomplished facts, and fixed starting- 
points for our progress, which to them were still unrealized 
ideals, — buildings of which they were to announce the 
plans, but not themselves to lay the foundations, much 
less to begin our task, which is to raise the superstructure, 
now that their children and our fathers have done that 
intermediate work. This is more or less the case with 
all ancient history ; but especially so with that of the 
Hebrews, which is a perpetual prophecy, and looking 
forward to what should come afterwards from all that the 
nation was doing then in a corner. It is easy enough to 

* 1 Peter i. 12. 



3 68 



FACTS AND INDUCTIONS 



get rid of any amount, more or less according to individual 
taste, of the meaning either of particular parts, or of the 
whole tenour of Hebrew thought and feeling, laws and 
institutions ; but such criticism is not really historical. 
And as I have already noticed, the way in which Isaiah 
here projects himself into the future is not to be set aside 
as fictitious, because it somewhat varies from that which 
he, and other prophets, adopt on other occasions. We 
must not select our facts by the test of a merely nine- 
teenth-century, European, notion of the human mind and 
its capacities ; nor must we exclude all such specimens 
of Hebrew prophecy as the 50th and 51st chapters of 
Jeremiah, * as well as the chapters of Isaiah now before us, 
and those earlier ones which have been pointed out as they 
occurred, and then frame, by induction from the remain- 
ing materials, a theory by which to test the others. 
While I agree that some previous examination and selec- 
tion of facts is necessary on such occasions, I must repeat 
that this is no fair or scientific performance of the duty. 
The difficulty of the word Cyrus, and of the historical tone 
of parts of these chapters, is not cleared up, but only put 
in a new, if not aggravated shape, by the supposition of 
the late origin of the text : and though modern experience 
affords us no instance of such a projection not merely of 
the mind, but (so to speak) of the person, of a writer into 
the future, as is supposed in those chapters of Jeremiah, 
the others of Isaiah, and above all, these before us, — yet the 
analogous power which Shakspeare habitually exercises, of 
so identifying himself with an indefinite variety of times 
and persons, that no criticism has ever been able to dis- 
tinguish him from them, is proof enough that there is 
nothing incredible, nothing non-human, in such a repre- 
sentation of the prophetic faculty, as they exhibit if we 
accept them as in the main genuine, though with the quali- 
fication suggested above. And therefore we have a right 
to take the one as well as the other set of facts — the one 
as well as the other phenomena of prophecy — as the basis 
of our induction : and if the old orthodox view is then 



* G-eseniu8 admits the genuineneFS of these ; Ewald denies it, more con- 
sistently with their common theory. 



AS TO PROPHECY. 



369 



shown to have been too limited, and to require modifica- 
tion as well as expansion, we may yet be sure, that in pro- 
portion as it is the more positive and matter-of-fact, so it 
is the truer and more scientific ; and that we shall find 
that the new will harmonize with the old, in proportion as 
we enlarge — not our theories but — our basis of facts, and 
inductions from facts. 



B B 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



ISAIAH XL. LXVI. — THE VISION OF THE EXILE AND RETURN. — THE TRANSITORY 

AND THE PERMANENT. — THE GOD OP NATURE, AND OF MAN. — THE POWER- 
LESS GODS OF THE NATIONS. THE JEWISH INSTITUTION OF THE REDEEMER. 

ITS EFFECT ON THE MORE ENLIGHTENED JEWS. — THE DELIVERER, KING, 

AND TEACHER. THE WORK OF ISAIAH AND HEZEKIAH. ITS SUCCESS AND 

ITS FAILURE. — JEWISH IDEA OF THE MESSIAH. — ITS RELATION TO THEIR 

POLITICAL LIFE. ATONEMENT A HUMAN FACT. — A RATIONAL IDEA. 

UNION OF HALF-TRUTHS. — THE MESSIAH OF THE GOSPEL. — THE PROPHETS 
AND THE APOSTLES. — ISAIAH'S SCIENCE OF POLITICS. — HIS DEATH. — HIS 
TRIUMPH. 



|F the manifest continuity of these twenty-six chapters, 



^ it has been well said that ' the whole flows on like a 
river, poured forth at one time from a breast entirely pos- 
sessed and filled by the Holy Spirit : ' and we might add, 
that the frequent repetition of the same thoughts, resem- 
bling the rise and fall of the waves, while the stream holds 
its steady, onward, course, is among the indications that 
the inspired seer speaks as the vision rises before his 
illumined eye, and as the word of Jehovah impels him to 
describe it ; and that he did not sit down to write with 
any systematic and deliberate arrangement of all that he 
had to say. 

The first two verses of chapter xl. form an introduction, 
in which the prophet throws himself into the future, 
beyond the end of the great national judgment foretold in 
the last chapter. The great desert between Babylon and 
Judea suggests the like imagery with that which Isaiah 
had already employed to express the like idea in chapter 
xxxv. : and probably both here, and there, may be traced 
an under- thought of the passage of Israel through the 
wilderness when he came out of Egypt. But the prophet's 
language now is more ideal than before ; and we shall ex- 




ISAIAH XL. i — j i. THE DELIVERER. 371 

elude a main part, if not the whole, of his meaning, if we 
introduce arbitrary limitations to define what he leaves 
indefinite, and pronounce, more positively than his own 
words do, that he supposes himself in Babylon, or Jeru- 
salem, or the Desert ; or that he does, or does not, 
represent Jehovah as bringing back the captive nation 
from the former city. The period is no doubt that of a 
Captivity, and not of the reign of Hezekiah ; but the 
words and images of the prophet show that his eye glances 
from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, with 
little restraint of time and place : with the ubiquity of 
genius and of inspiration, he sees the appointed term of 
Israel's hard warfare arrived ; he hears the herald of the 
approaching Jehovah ; he calls on Jerusalem and Zion, 
themselves free and rejoicing in a moment, to spread the 
good tidings among the other cities of Judah, and to 
declare that this Jehovah is their own King, and their 
God. What enemies he has been triumphing over, what 
deliverance he has been effecting, whether he comes alone 
to a people already waiting to receive him, or is bringing 
them with him, redeemed or recovered from captivity, the 
vision defines not : but it sees that the triumph will be 
complete, and the glory manifest ; that the Lord God will 
do the whole work that has to be done, and earn the 
effectual deliverance of his people ; and that, with a love 
no less tender than his power is strong, ' He shall feed his 
flock like a shepherd ; he shall gather the lambs with his 
arm, and carry them in his bosom ; and shall gently lead 
the milch ewes.' 

The prophet sees into the dark night of the future only 
by momentary flashes of light ; but his vision is still 
farther interrupted by the doubt expressed in verses 6 
and '7, where he seems to ask, How can these promises 
of God be more effectual now than before, when, after 
they had been made in a manner apparently so ample, 
we saw them all nullified by that act of Hezekiah ? And 
the other voice within him, — 'voices of two different 
natures,' — replies, that it is true that man is at best so 
weak and sinful, that if God leaves him for a moment, to 
try him, and to know all that is in his heart, he falls away 

B E 2 



372 ISAIAH XL. 12—31. THE GOD OF NATURE, 



as certainly as the grass withers when the wind of heaven 
blows on it : but what then ? ' The grass withereth, the 
flower fadeth ; but the Word of our God shall stand for 
ever : ' that Word which in nature has been so efficacious, 
that every created thing still keeps the whole law and 
course which was imposed on it when, in the first day of 
its creation, God said, Let it be so, can and will be no 
less informative and quickening in the spirit of man. 
Isaiah looks on the whole Jewish polity, which had in his 
days attained to the highest development of which it was 
capable ; he sees and feels that not in this is there any 
continuance, anything which can be really trusted in for 
strength, and righteousness, and eternal life ; and thus he 
is able to hear and understand the voice which declares 
that those things may and will fade like grass, yet that 
men may rise out of this transitory state, by laying hold 
on the permanence of God. And what the prophet thus 
implies, the apostle, in the fulness of time, could actually 
assert, when he quotes these words, and explains, that 
while man's corruptible nature is like the fading grass, the 
gospel preaches to us that we may be born again to a new 
and incorruptible life, by the Word of God ; and that thus 
being made partakers of the divine nature, we may each 
personally escape the corruption which is in the world, 
and purify our souls in obeying the truth through the 
spirit ; and at the same time become members of a chosen 
generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar 
people. J/r 

Cicero could ask, ' When we look at the heavens, first 
in all their unclouded beauty, and then with such rapid 
changes passing over their face ; when we consider the 
alternations of day and night, and the succession of the four 
several seasons ; when we behold the sun which regulates 
all these, and the moon and stars all keeping their courses 
with unfailing constancy ; can we doubt that some present 
and efficient ruler is over them?'f And Seneca says, 

* 1 Peter i. 22 to ii. 10 ; 2 Peter i. 4. All the epistles indeed, from first 
to last, are expositions of the practical substitution, wrought D3 7 Christ, of 
' the power of an endless life ' for i the law of a carnal commandment,' as 
Paul expresses it. 

f Tusc. Qucest. i. 



AND OF MAN'S SPIRIT. 



313 



' They all continue, not because they are eternal, but 
because the watchfulness of their governor protects them : 
imperishable things need no guardian ; but these are pre- 
served by their maker, who, by his power, controls their 
natural tendency to decay.' * And Hume, though his 
philosophy was irreligious in comparison with that of either 
Koman, could raise his hands to the starry sky, and show 
that he too had a human heart, by exclaiming to Fergus- 
son, ' 0 Adam, how can a man look at that, and not 
believe in a God ! ' But Isaiah, while he here handles 
this argument with an eloquence sublimer and more 
earnest than any of theirs, does not stop in this ' Court 
of the Gentiles,' but makes that assertion of the reality 
and power of the Creator which is their end, a step to his 
higher conclusion, that he is also the God of the spirits of 
men ; and that the wisdom and power which he exhibits 
in nature are but the symbols that ' He fainteth not, 
neither is weary,- — there is no searching of his under- 
standing,' in a region in which natural order and life, are 
of no avail. It may seem at first as though this were to 
prove a higher by a lower attribute of God : but the works 
of creation have this special effect, that they bear witness 
that God is in himself, and not merely in relation with 
us ; and then, through this revelation of an Absolute 
Being in creation, we are the easier led on to apprehend 
the higher truth and fact of an Absolute God of our spirits, 
in whom we are to trust, even though this or that accus- 
tomed relation between him and us seems to have failed. 
The pious Israelite, the Nation, the Church, must not 
suppose that, because their way is hid from themselves, 
and nothing appears but the oppression of utter desolation 
of spirit and circumstances, therefore God does not see the 
way, and is not actually working it out, and preparing to 
do his people right and justice, by methods not the less 
wise because they are for the time inscrutable. Let man 
wait for God : — ' They that wait on Jehovah shall renew 
their strength : they shall lift up their wings like eagles ; 
they shall run, and not be weary ; they shall walk, and 
not faint.' 



Epist. Iviii. 



374 ISAIAH XLI 1—29. THE FALSE GODS. 

In reply to Israel's complaint (xl. 27) that his cause 
against the heathen oppressors is neglected or dismissed 
by the Great Judge, God now (chapter xli. 1) summons the 
nations to his court of justice ; and as Israel had just 
been assured that, if they would wait upon Jehovah, they 
would renew their strength, and discern his wisdom, an 
interval is granted to the heathens and their gods, in 
which they too may renew their strength, and have time 
to produce evidence of the powers of design and action 
possessed by their gods, and in virtue of which they claim 
the right to keep Israel in subjection. The solemn pause 
thus allowed — ■' Keep silence . . . : then let them speak' 
— is filled (how bitter the irony !) by the nations employ- 
ing their carpenters and goldsmiths to make a particularly 
good and strong set of gods, because there is a general 
alarm that the emergency is great. For it is already seen 
that the judgment goes against them by default : that 
these gods can show no plans, can do nothing good or 
bad ; and that they, and their worshippers, have neither 
right nor power to break up the designs of Almighty 
Wisdom. They have been trying to do this, by those 
oppressions of Israel which were only permitted for a 
time, because they fell into and formed a part of God's 
own plan. But Israel had from the first an appointed 
and chief place in that plan : He who is at once King of 
Israel and God of all the earth, has been maintaining his 
chosen people in their place, generation after generation, 
when he made Abraham his friend, and gave the blessing 
to his seed, and when he made the rock yield springs of 
water under the rod of Moses : and now, though they are 
reduced to extremity of weakness and dismay, the Holy 
One of Israel bids them fear not, for he has taken upon 
himself to be their Redeemer. 

In order to understand and realize the meaning and 
force of this word — Redeemer — throughout Isaiah's pro- 
phecies, as indeed wherever it occurs in the Hebrew books, 
we must consider what the institution and office of the 
' Goel ' or Redeemer, in the Hebrew commonwealth, 
actually was. It was a properly patriarchal office : yet, 
with a provision for the progressive as well as the conser- 



THE JEWISH REDEEMER. 



375 



vative element, such as is not always found in patriarchal 
institutions, it was an office which devolved rather on the 
elder brother than on the father ; on the near and power- 
ful kinsman of the rising generation, rather than on the 
head of the family. It was his duty, when any branch of 
the family fell into decay, to ransom both the patrimo- 
nial land and the enslaved owner ; to avenge their blood 
when shed in feud ; and to marry the childless widow, and 
so keep alive in Israel the name and line of her first hus- 
band. The Book of Ruth supplies living lineaments to 
the lesral enactments of Moses \ k and when we once 
accustom ourselves to the Jewish point of vieV, and see 
the actual institution, and its workings, as they saw it, we 
shall perceive that these must have given the characteristics 
of a ' Goel,' or Redeemer, to many a national hero, — to a 
Moses, a Joshua, or a Samson, as well as to a Joseph 
whom ' God sent before ' his father's house, ' to preserve 
them a posterity in the earth, and to save them with a 
great deliverance.' Thus there grew up a distinct and 
well understood faith, in the minds of the more expe- 
rienced and enlightened Jews, of an invisible Redeemer, 
of whom these were but the earthly and partial represen- 
tatives. This faith we recognize in Jacob, when he in- 
voked for Joseph's sons the guardianship of the 1 God 
who had fed him all his life long, and the Angel which 
had redeemed him from all evil ;t by Job, when he met 
the worst evils of the present time with the assertion, 
' I know that my Redeemer liveth and by Isaiah, 
throughout the prophecies before us. Yitringa, after 
quoting these words of J acob, and of J ob, adds, ' That 
under the Old Economy that Angel — the assertor and 
avenger — did not discharge the whole office to which he 
was destined : yet in every liberation of the |>eople of God, 
and every vindication of their rights which he did effect, 
the Church might discern, as in a type, the preludings§ of 

* Leviticus xxv. 24, ff. ; Numbers xxxv. 19, ff. The word translated 
' Avenger ' in the latter passage is the same (Goel) as 1 Redeemer ' in the 
former. 

t Genesis xlviii. 16. % Job xix. 25. 

§ Prceludebat huic officio. So an English divine speaks of ' the preludings 
of the incarnation.' 



3 7 6 ISAIAH XLIL THE SER VANT OF JEHO VAH. 



that office of Redeemer, which, by the will of the Father, 
he was to fulfil in the last times.' 

A Redeemer, or Deliverer, is appointed (chapter xlii.) to 
carry out the judgment pronounced upon the islands and 
nations just called to trial. And this judgment is farther 
explained to be, on the one hand, a moral conversion of 
the Gentiles by means capable of addressing their mind 
and spirit ; and on the other, a triumph over all irreclaim- 
able rebels, by Jehovah going forth as a man of war, and 
himself making waste the mountains and hills, and giving 
occasion to the righteous, not only of Israel but also of 
the Gentiles, to give glory to him, and to rejoice in the 
accomplishment of the great design of the universe which 
he alone, and none of the graven images, had framed from 
the beginning. But in the previous chapter (xli. 2) there 
is another description of the same, or another, deliverer, 
variously interpreted to refer to Cyrus, to Abraham and 
his posterity, to Christ, or to the Gospel under the name 
of * righteousness :' and — with the reservation that there 
is no special prediction of Cyrus — I am unable to exclude 
any of these meanings, here and in the like passages, 
or to explain their concurrence or interchange, except by 
recognizing the whole as a vision or discourse in which 
the speaker has taken up an ideal position far removed 
from his actual one, and allows his imagination to carry 
him where it will, uncurbed by logical forms. It is gene- 
rally true, that the more we can bring together the partial 
and divergent lights of the commentators of different 
periods and modes of thinking, and the more careful we 
are that it is on the simple text itself, and not on their 
statement of it, that we concentrate their rays, the more 
likely are we to get at least a glimpse of its real, adequate 
meaning. And nowhere is this more the case than in 
these descriptions of the ' Servant of God,' which fill so 
large a part of the rest of the book. The everlasting 
God, Jehovah the Creator of the ends of the earth, has 
from the beginning planned, and brought into operation, a 
moral, political, spiritual constitution and order, as well as 
a physical world ; and he has chosen one nation for the 
first and normal embodiment and illustration of the 



THE NATION AND THE CHURCH, 



377 



design, and to be the main instrument for carrying it 
out in all other nations, and for uniting them in an 
universal brotherhood : and now that this nation has 
itself sunk under the evils out of which it was to lead 
the others, the original plan provides an adequate Ke- 
deemer and Guide for it and them. That the work 
extends over ages of time, employs races as well as in- 
dividuals, and is in the main spiritual, and the work of 
God himself, is plainly declared by the prophet. If at 
one or two points of his vision he sees that one external 
portion of the work is to be effected by some friendly 
though heathen conqueror, yet he chiefly looks either for 
a direct interposition of divine power, as in the overthrow 
of Sennacherib ; or else for the appearance of a hero like 
David, who will lead his people to fight their own battle. 
And side by side with this idea of the Redeemer, appear, 
throughout the book, those of the King, and the Prophet 
or Teacher : while each of these finds its counterpart in 
the answering images of Israel and the Church. The 
nation is redeemed from Babylon, and from Edom, which 
is the symbol of Babylon, as Babylon is of all godless 
tyranny : it is established in a prosperity never known 
by Hezekiah or Solomon ; it is secured in possession of 
these blessings by a covenant that they shall have a more 
spiritual guidance than heretofore :* and all this is but the 
inmost circle of the ever- widening, universal Church, which 
is indeed for the most part depicted as a political and social 
subordination of the Gentiles to Israel, but in more than 
one place as a real illumination and spiritual organization 
of the Gentiles themselves, by the Lord of Israel, who 
employs his chosen people as instruments for that, the 
original end for which they were chosen. Thus, in 
chapter xlii. 6, 'I, Jehovah, will give thee for a cove- 
nant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles and 
again, in chapter xlix. 6, 'And he said, it is a light 
thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the 
tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel : I 
will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that 
thou may est be my salvation unto the end of the earth :' 

* Chapter lix. 21. 



378 



THE KING AND THE TEACHER: 



— And in chapter li., verses 4 — 6, the correspondence 
of which with the opening verses of chapter ii. is so 
marked, — ' Hearken unto me, my people, and give ear 
unto me, 0 my nation : for a law shall go forth from 
me, and I will establish my judgment for a light of the 
nations. My righteousness is near, my salvation is gone 
forth, and mine arms shall judge the nations : the isles 
shall wait upon me ; and in mine arm shall they trust. 
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the 
earth beneath : for the heavens shall vanish away like 
smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and 
they that dwell therein shall die in like manner : but my 
salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not 
be abolished.' 

If the reader will forgive some unavoidable repetition, he 
may perhaps find our subject still clearer, if we follow into 
farther detail that method — which, though as old as St. 
Peter, is as new as the most modern critical science, — of 
considering the prophet's meaning in the light in which he 
must have himself contemplated it, and also in that in 
which it presents itself to us who live after the coming of 
Christ. Isaiah, meditating upon the experience of his past 
life, would find that the various qualifications of an adequate 
Kedeemer, King, and Teacher, unfolded themselves before 
him, at the same time with his vision of the depressed and 
destitute state of Israel and the world, and of the divine 
and universal polity which was to be brought out of these. 
He had been called to the office of prophet, in the days of 
Uzziah, by Jehovah, who had elected him to be his ser- 
vant, and upheld him in his duty by continually ' putting 
his spirit upon him.'' 55 ' He was endowed with ' the tongue 
of the learned ' in no ordinary measure, and might have 
' made his voice to be heard in the streets,' while a sym- 
pathizing audience approved his haughtiest eloquence, if 
he had only used it to enforce the maxims of worldly 
wisdom ; but he had not turned back from the harder 
task, of preaching and teaching in all humility and 
patience the unpalatable doctrine of a holy, God-trust- 
ing life. He had taken care, neither to ' break the 

* Chapter xlii. l,ff. 



HEZEKIAH AND ISAIAH. 



379 



bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax,' when his 
ministry produced some weak result ; nor to suffer his 
own spirit to be broken and quenched, when all result 
seemed wanting, and when he had to submit to be 
' despised by man and abhorred by the nation,'"* or even 
(like so many prophets before and after him,t and as was 
most probably his lot in the reign of Ahaz) to ' give his 
back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked 
off the hair.'+ And like other 'preachers of righteousness 
in the great congregation, '§ he had protested continually 
against that abuse of the Levitical sacrifices which turned 
them into an opus operatum ;|| and like them, he had 
learnt that the meaning 5*f these sacrifices must be 
realized by a man sacrificing himself, ' pouring out his 
soul,'^f and that not fqr himself only, but for his brethren 
also. And Hezekiah — the king co-operating with the 
prophet in the work of national reformation — had, by*a 
like life of toil and self-sacrifice, contended with the 
same, or corresponding, obstacles in , his efforts to ' bring 
forth justice in, and by, the force of truth,' and to ' estab- 
lish it in the land,' and ' extend it to the nations' around. 
And lastly, the ' Angel of J ehovah ' had destroyed the 
power of Sennacherib, and compelled him to let his cap- 
tives return to their own land, there to enjoy peace and 
prosperity under their own king and laws, and to worship 
their own God in Zion. These ' former things had come 
to pass,' and Isaiah could distinguish the design and the 
hand of God in them, no less than in his creating the 
heavens, spreading out the earth, and giving breath to 
the people upon it : but he had also seen that the deliver- 
ance, and restoration, and reformation, effected by these 
means were only temporary and external ; and thus he 
would be led to perceive that a mightier Prophet than 
himself, a greater King than Hezekiah, a more effectual 
Redeemer than that Angel, was needed, and might be 

* Chapter xlix. 7. 

f Matthew xxxiii. 29 — 39 ; Hebrews xi. 35 — 38 ; and the whole Jewish 
history to which these passages refer. 
t Chapter 1. 4—6. 

§ Psalm xl. 6 — 10. See the whole passage. 

|| Chapter i. 11; xliii. 23, 24. H Chapter liii. 12. 



380 THE DIVINE KING AND TEACHER. 



looked for ; and so the idea would dawn upon his inward 
eye, of the coming of One who could adequately fill all 
these offices, and really accomplish a work to which no 
mere man, or angel, was competent, however divinely 
directed and upheld. For observe — since in this we have 
the clue to the transition from the expectation of a human, 
to that of a divine, Redeemer — that the work of Isaiah and 
Hezekiah, which had so failed of any but an external and 
temporary result, had not been itself external and tem- 
porary, but spiritual, and Avrought by spiritual men, who 
made ' righteousness the girdle of their loins, and faithful- 
ness the girdle of their reins ;' and who had sacrificed 
themselves, and not bulls arfl goats, for their nation, and 
yet with no more efficacy than if it had been only the 
latter. Nothing better in degree, could supply the want: 
what man could do had been done, and it was now proved 
that something different in kind was required, something 
which could raise humanity above itself, 

' And give to every power a double power, 
Above their functions and their offices.' 

And just in proportion as Isaiah, and those who heard his 
words, could enter into the meaning of this coming of 
the Messiah, the God-man, could they realize that they 
had, after all, a firm ground of faith and hope to stand on. 
The idea of the Messiah is the keystone of the arch of 
prophecy, and makes a living temple of Jewish history : 
he who had it found it again possible to see a divine life 
and meaning in the office and acts of each particular king 
and prophet ; in the nation ; and in each of its consti- 
tuted and corporate orders ; even while it could no longer 
be questioned that they were all in themselves but tran- 
sitory symbols. And thus, for us too, in like manner — if 
this prophecy of the ' Servant of Jehovah,' which is the 
central subject of these last twenty-six chapters of Isaiah, 
be in this manner understood to speak of Jesus Christ, the 
Son of God and the Son of David, it throws a clear light 
upon all the other interpretations which have been offered 
as substitutes for this. The ' Servant of J ehovah ' has 
been explained to be C}^rus, Isaiah himself, Hezekiah, 



ISAIAH I III THE ATONEMENT. 381 



Josiah, Jeremiah, or some unknown prophet : the House 
of David, the Maccabees, the Jewish Nobles in the times 
of the Exile : the Priesthood, the Order of Prophets, the 
Jewish Nation, and the spiritual Israel, or Church in the 
nation : and it is very interesting and instructive to see 
how much reason may be adduced in favour of each of 
these interpretations, and yet how each is unable to hold 
its place, for more than a moment ; because each, though a 
shadow, is only a shadow, and a finite as well as transient 
image of the infinite and substantive Original. Let the 
words of the prophet be applied, in as far as they are 
applicable, to each of these, and to all other, 1 preludings ' 
of the incarnation : it will not be the less true, it will be 
even the more manifest, that only in the coming of our 
Lord Jesus Christ were they fulfilled. 

It is not denied by their authors or advocates, that 
some of the interpretations of chapter liii., above enume- 
rated, are intended to supersede the belief that Jesus is the 
Christ, or that there is either Christ, or Prophecy, in the 
Christian sense ; and they say that they thus offer us a 
rational explanation, instead of an unintelligible dogma of 
theology. But we must not mistake them, because they 
mistake us. They do recognize a valuable half-truth, 
which theologians have too much overlooked ; and the 
neglect of which has made the Christian idea of the 
Atonement seem too much like an arbitrary dogma, 
when it might have been shown as well as felt (for the 
latter it always has been) to be the fullest and most 
luminous manifestation of an universal law, and one with 
which, in its lower operations, we are all more or less 
acquainted. The passage I have already referred to in 
the 40th Psalm, is enough for mere logical proof that 
the idea of self-sacrifice for others, as the highest and 
most effective duty, was intelligible to the more en- 
lightened at least of the ancient Hebrews ; but if any 
one has any difficulty in realizing how Isaiah could, nay 
must, have given the words of this chapter liii., a sound, 
coherent sense, derived from his own experience and obser- 
vation, I would pray him to look into his own experience 
and observation in the matter. The soft answer which 



3 8z 



SUFFERING FOR OTHERS. 



restores good humour in a casual conversation ; the for- 
bearance with which the statesman meets the ignorances 
and prejudices, the censures and the slanders, of those 
to whom he only sues for leave to do them good ; the 
work of the minister of the Gospel, of which St. Paul, 
among other hardly less strong expressions, asserts that 
' he fills up that which is behind of the afflictions of 
Chris t'* are but instances of an universal law of man's 
constitution, discoverable in all human relationships, and 
which enacts that men can, and do, endure the evil doings 
of their brethren, in such sort that through that endurance 
on the part of the innocent the guilty are freed from the 
power — from both the guilt and the punishment — of their 
ill deeds. And if these instances seem insignificant or 
foreign, there is one which, in some form or other, must 
have come home to the heart of every one not deficient 
in the commonest observation and sympathies. There is 
hardly any one but has known some household in which, 
year after year, selfishness and worldliness, and want of 
family affection, have been apparent enough ; and yet, 
instead of the moral break-up which might have been 
expected, and the final moral ruin of the various mem- 
bers, the original bond of union has held together : there 
has plainly been some counteracting, redeeming, power at 
work ; and at last it has turned out that, not only has the 
course of that household not been downward to ruin, but 
has taken a new and upward direction, when some outward 
event, a death, or a marriage, brought to a crisis the ele- 
ments of a change long maturing in secret. This, I say, is 
the commonest of all stories ; and when we look again to 
see what is that redeeming power, ever at work for those 
who know and care nothing about it, we always find that 
there is some member of that family — oftenest the wife or 
mother — who is silently bearing all things, believing all 
things, hoping all things, for them, but for her or himself 
expecting little or nothing in this world but the rest of 
the grave. Such a one is really bearing the sins of that 
household, and thus saving them from the guilt as well as 
punishment of sin : it is no dogma, no forensic phrase 

* Colossians i. 24. 



THE MAN OF SORROWS. 



333 



transferred by way of illustration from the practice of the 
law courts ; but a fact, a vital formation, actually taking 
place, here, under our very eyes. He who has seen and 
understood this fact, in any one of its common, daily 
shapes, needs no commentary on such words as — 1 His 
visage was so marred more than any man, and his form 
more than the sons of men : — he hath no form, nor come- 
liness ; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that 
we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men, 
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief : and we hid 
as it were our faces from him ; he was despised, and we 
esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and 
carried our sorrows ; yet did we esteem him stricken, 
smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for 
our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities : the 
chastisement of our peace was upon him ; and with his 
stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone 
astray ; we have turned every one to his own way ; and 
Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was 
oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his 
mouth : as a lamb that is brought to the slaughter, and 
as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened .not 
his mouth. And who of his generation will consider 
that he was cut off, out of the land of the living, for the 
transgression of my people : — stricken for them ? Yet it 
pleased Jehovah to bruise him ; he hath put him to 
grief : when thou shalt make his soul an offering for 
sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and 
the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand. He 
shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied : 
by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; 
for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide 
him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil 
with the strong ; because he hath poured out his soul unto 
death : and he was numbered with the transgressors ; and 
he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the 
transgressors.' 

We may notice the expression ' It pleased Jehovah ' to 
bruise him, which, according to the usual Hebrew spirit, 
and way of looking at things, is equivalent to our saying 



THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 



that it is an ultimate fact, the original seat of a law. And 
this law is, that one human will can unite itself with 
another, and raise up the latter out of a state of sin and 
misery, not otherwise to be escaped from, if it (the former) 
consents and submits to be accounted a partaker in the 
guilt, and therefore, to be actually made a sharer in the 
misery of that other. But it is a part of the same law, — 
every instance that can be produced will show it — that no 
man can thus bear the sins of another unless he be himself 
blameless in the matter then in hand. In the minor and 
more outward relationships and duties of life this qualifi- 
cation of blamelessness is to be found of the kind required ; 
for there are virtuous as well as vicious men in the world : 
but when we go a little deeper, we discover a difficulty 
which threatens to invalidate all our philosophy, if we 
attempt to reduce it to practice. Every man, the most 
virtuous, the meekest, holiest, most loving, no less than 
the most selfish and vicious, is at heart a sinner ; has 
that inherent defect and corruption in him which we call 
original sin ; and is thereby disqualified from this which 
— as we have said — is the only way in which man can be 
saved out of the guilt and misery in which he has involved 
every relationship of his life. Whatever we may have seen 
the minister of religion, the patriot, the wife, or the mother, 
doing, and doing with success, we have in the background 
the certainty that their good works must be outflanked at 
last, because the evil which they are saving others from is 
still there, in themselves : the end may be put off, but must 
come at last, which the prophet expresses, when he says, 
' I looked, and there was none to help.' And thus we 
arrive once more, as Isaiah arrived before us, at the neces- 
sity for the coming of One who, because he is God as well 
as man. is free from this defect ; and, therefore, can bear 
the sins of the whole world, and of each man in it, with- 
out failing in the last resort. And thus, and then, each 
Christian minister, each Christian ruler, each Christian 
member of a family, will and does receive power to do 
that in his lower sphere, which has first been done for 
him in the higher. And thus man, made in the image 
of God the Creator, is renewed in the image of God the 



JEWISH INTERPRETATIONS OF CHAP. LIU. 385 



Saviour ; and can reflect that image among his brethren, 
having the mind of Christ, and being a fellow-worker with 
him."" 

Thus we do justice to the half-truth, the finite, human, 
element, in the Jewish and rationalist interpretations, and 
at the same time bring the Christian interpretation, with 
its whole truth, human and divine in one, into fuller light 
than if we overlooked or denied the former. And this 
is not less the case as to the explanation that the 
' Servant of Jehovah ' means the Jewish Nation. What 
was true of the King of the nation, its real Head and 
Representative, must be true of the nation itself, in as far 
as it acknowledged him, walked in his light, was clothed 
with his righteousness, and actuated by his spirit. The 
history of the foundation of the Church by Jesus Christ 
and his Apostles, all Jews, and the fact that the Bible is 
wholly a Jewish book, show how truly and how peculiarly 
the law came forth from Zion, and the word of Jehovah 
from Jerusalem, to all nations ; while the same thing was 
partially and symbolically effected in the preceding ages 
of the people. And then, when they ' would not have this 
man to rule over them,' it became inevitable that they 
should bear their own sins, which they refused to let him 
bear for them ; and it may, therefore, well be possible to 
trace a close resemblance between this prophetic descrip- 
tion of the sufferings of the Messiah, with those which the 
pride and rebellion of the nation have brought upon them- 
selves. And it is interesting, and illustrative, that the 
periods of history in which the persecutions of the Jews 
have been most cruel, are (it is said) those in which their 
writers are found to dwell most earnestly, and with a 
view to the practical instruction of the people themselves, 
upon this interpretation. They felt how terribly real its 
application to themselves was. 

The manner in which the New Testament writers assume 
this prophecy to refer to Jesus Christ, t seems to indicate 
that, as they were led into all truth, and their eyes opened 
to understand the meaning of Moses and the Prophets, — 

* Philipp. ii. 4—11. 

f Matthew viii. 17 ; John xi. 51; Acts viii. 32 ; 1 Peter ii. 23—25. 

C C 



3 86 



THE IDEA AND THE FACT 



the records of God's counsels and works — they perceived, 
on the one hand, what the character of the Messiah must 
be in order to his filling the proper place in those counsels, 
and, on the other, how this very character was actually 
exhibited, in all its parts, in the life and conversation of 
their Master. And thus the two, the idea and the answer- 
ing fact, united so simply and naturally in their minds, 
that there seemed no occasion to assert — it was enough to 
notice — the reality of the union. 

There is, in our day, a growing disinclination to attend 
to those minute correspondences between these words of 
Isaiah, and the details of our Lord's death and burial, 
which were once thought — by Paley for instance — -so 
important a part of the evidences of Christianity. It 
would be easy to suggest grounds for thinking that our 
philosophy may be as one-sided as that of our fathers in 
this respect ; and that the course of the universe, the 
working out by God of his original design, may have 
minute harmonies, and relations of the parts to each other 
and to the whole. But one advantageous effect of this 
diminished interest in the literal fulfilment of prophecy, 
we may notice, in the increased importance which it has 
allowed prophecy itself — as distinguished from that literal 
fulfilment — to take. We can answer better than our 
fathers could, the question, what Prophecy was given for : 
whether it had not some place of its own, some specific 
purpose ? For if God's purpose in giving it to us had 
been to supply a ground for such arguments as Paley 
builds upon it, it would surely have been much more 
explicit and literal : and again, if the spiritual and 
practical light to be gained from it were exactly the 
same as that which the New Testament expositions throw 
on the death of Christ,— and this would be so, if the one, 
like the other, is a statement and exposition of facts — 
then one or the other part of the Bible becomes super- 
fluous. But when we see that Prophecy is the setting 
forth of God's design, as a Design, we can recognize the 
method of the Bible, and find that each part of the revela- 
tion has its proper meaning, and power of throwing light 
on the rest, And this chapter liii. of Isaiah, in parti- 



OF THE ATONEMENT. 



387 



cular, exhibits the idea of the Atonement, as an Idea. 
The facts are recorded in the Gospels and Acts. The 
Epistles declare and expound the union of the facts with 
the idea. And, if we will fully understand them in this 
union, we must also understand, and, therefore, study 
them, separately. 

Induction of the law, from the events of his own time : 
deduction therefrom of a future realization of that law in 
universal society: — such are Isaiah's contributions to the 
science of politics ; while to those who have come after 
him belongs the verification required to complete the 
circle. And in following Isaiah in this his method, and 
then doing our own part, we find, along with a science of 
politics, a canon of positive criticism, which enables us to 
investigate the question of the genuineness of the book, 
without excluding historical evidence, or calling in hypo- 
thesis to supply its place. I have shown at so great 
length the applicability of this method in both respects, 
in reference to the central subject of Isaiah's whole 
writings — the Holy One of Israel — that I may best leave 
the reader to follow it out through the other kindred 
subjects of which these last twenty-six chapters treat, 
venturing to assure him that he will find it hold good in 
these no less than in that. The sinful state of the nation, 
and its punishment by exile to Babylon ; the destruction 
of the oppressor, and deliverance of the captives ; the 
restoration of the nation not merely to outward prosperity, 
but to, and by, a spiritual life sustained by the constant 
presence of their Lord, while the irreclaimable are cast 
out that they may no longer pollute the renewed people ; 
and the extension of this regenerated society, till it grows 
from a chosen nation into an universal Church, of which 
the Lord, the King of Israel, is the Head : — all these, in 
their various aspects, and with the means by which they 
are to be brought about, the student will find set forth by 
Isaiah as they rose before him in vision ; while at the 
same time he will be able to trace into its details the 
evidence that this vision, in all its parts, had its counter- 
part in the events of the prophet's own times, and that it 
was his insight into the meaning of that actual world, 

c c 2 



3 8 8 



THE DEATH OF ISAIAH. 



which made possible to him, and makes intelligible to us, 
his foresight into the ideal : — ideal to him, but actual to 
us who are ' no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow- 
citizens with the saints, and of the household of God ; 
and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and 
prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner- 
stone ; in whom all the building fitly framed together 
groweth unto an holy temple in the Loed : in whom we 
also are builded together for an habitation of God through 
the Spirit. '* 

Authentic history has preserved no account of the 
death of Isaiah : but there is no improbability in the 
Jewish tradition that he was one of the martyrs whose 
' innocent blood Manasseh shed, till he had filled Jeru- 
salem from one end to the other/ 1 and that the mode of 
his death was by being sawn asunder, to which the 
Christian fathers understood reference to be made in 
Hebrews xi. 37. If Isaiah was twenty years old when he 
began his ministry, in the last year of the reign of Uzziah, 
he would have been eighty at the death of Hezekiah. 
Hengstenberg supposes these latter prophecies to have 
been written in the days of Manasseh ; and it must be 
admitted that there is one passage at least in them, which 
supports this view, — chap. lvi. 9. to lvii. 12, — both in its 
general picture of the state of society, and in the allusion 
to the death of the righteous, as taking him away from 
the evil to come, which cannot but remind us of Hezekiah, 
and his melancholy consolation that there should be peace 
and truth in his days. But political and social changes 
are not made in a moment ; and coming events would 
have cast their shadows on the last days of Hezekiah and 
Isaiah, and have made this language suitable in the mouth 
of the prophet, even though we should prefer to believe 
that he, as well as the king, was spared the actual sight of 
the evil. To the objection that, if Isaiah had written in 
the days of Manasseh, that king's name would have ap- 
peared with the others in the title of the Book, it might 
be replied that death must always prevent an author from 

* Ephesians ii. 19 — 22. f 2 Kings xxi. 16. 



EVERLASTING LIGHT. 



389 



putting the very last stroke to the collection of his works ; 
and it might even be argued, that there are other indica- 
tions that such last finish is wanting in the minor arrange- 
ments of these twenty-six chapters. But it is unnecessary 
to refine so much, when we cannot get at certainty after 
all. The last days, like the last words, of the prophet, 
pass from the actual into the ideal ; and whether the final 
act of his life was, like its whole previous course, a sur- 
render of himself to suffer for his people, or whether he 
was permitted a foretaste, in the repose of an honoured 
death-bed, of the eternal rest that awaited him when all 
his worldly task was done, he was secure in the covenant 
and promise which he had habitually realized for himself, 
while he declared them to others ; — ' Then shall thy light 
break forth as the morning, and thy health shall spring 
forth speedily : and thy righteousness shall go before thee ; 
the glory of Jehovah shall be thy rereward. Then shalt 
thou call, and Jehovah shall answer, thou shalt cry, and 
he shall say, Here I am.' — And thou shalt know that I 
Jehovah am. thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer the mighty 
One of Jacob. For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I 
will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron : 
and I will make thy officers peace, and thine exactors 
righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy 
land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders : but 
thou shalt call thy walls, Salvation ; and thy gates, 
Praise. The sun shall be no more thy light by day, 
neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto 
thee : but Jehovah shall be unto thee an everlasting 
light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more 
go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself, for 
Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of 
thy mourning shall be ended/ 



APPENDIX. 



THE ENGLISH TEXT OF THE BOOK OF ISAIAH. 



NOTE. 



The English Text of the Book of Isaiah, which here follows, 
is that of our Authorized Version, but with some changes and 
amendments. 

A Translation should represent not merely the words and 
phrases of the Original, but also (as far as possible) its whole 
character, national, spiritual, literary, such as it would have been 
if first written in the language to which it is now transferred, 
and by one to whom that language was his own. And such a 
Translation of the Hebrew Bible is our Authorized Version, in 
the main. It gives, not only the words and bare thoughts of the 
Hebrew text, but its imagination, poetry, and eloquence ; its 
apprehensions of God and man, and of their relations to each 
other ; and its antique stateliness and dignity ; and this not in a 
way of servile imitation but by a living counterpart which is no 
less English than Hebrew. Such a translation was probably 
only possible at the time, and under the conditions, of the actual 
work. It is, in the main, as perfect as can be : there are only 
some defects of detail to be made good ; and some variations 
which may be permitted for a special purpose like my own. 

It is not indeed possible to compare any translation with its 
original without at first feeling as if we might by some other ren- 
dering save some delicate and expressive shade of meaning which 
we see in the one but not in the other : but the more thoughtfully 
we try to effect such changes the more do we find how impassable 
are the limits within which even the best translation can be made 
to represent the original ; and, in the case before us, how those 
limits have almost always been reached by our translators of the 
Bible, and reached as it would not be possible for any genius to 



394 



NOTE. 



reach them now for the first time. I have made many essays, 
at considerable intervals, to ascertain what improvements are 
possible in the Authorized Version of Isaiah, by comparing it with 
the Hebrew, and with the scholarly versions of Lowth, Dathe, 
Gesenius, Ewald, and Cheyne, as well as with the more merely 
literal renderings of the principal commentators : but each attempt 
has brought me back to a more scrupulous and reverent regard to 
the Old Version ; and I can believe that a still repeated revision 
of my own text would still farther reduce my variations. But it 
has been my aim to make no alteration which does not really 
improve the sense, and for which I have not found a fit word or 
phrase elsewhere in the Bible, or in Shakspeare. If even within 
these limits I have erred, I hope I may nevertheless have added 
to those experiments which, though not finally adopted, throw 
light on what a revised text should be. The changes which I 
have made are these : — 

I have printed the English Text in paragraphs ; but these, and 
their subdivisions, correspond with the chapters, verses, and 
members of verses, of the Authorized Version, except where the 
sense required a variation, or where I have kept more strictly to 
the Masoretic divisions. 

I read 'Jehovah' instead of 'the Loed,' except in the expression 
'the Loed of Hosts,' and in one or two other instances, where 
euphony seemed to require the old rendering. For popular and 
devotional use ' Loed ' is no doubt the right word, here, and 
elsewhere through the Bible, because it assumes and asserts, as 
often as it occurs, that Jehovah the God of Israel is the God and 
Lord whom we still believe in, and still worship in our churches 
and our homes : but, for the historical purpose which I have had 
before me in this volume, * Jehovah ' seems the more proper 
word, as more distinctly marking the fact that to the Hebrews 
of Isaiah's time the first and nearest idea of God was that he 
was Jehovah the divine King of their nation ; while the belief 
that he was also the God of the whole earth, and the Lord of 
the spirits of all men, was as yet subordinate to that national 
faith. And at the same time the name Jehovah is not, like Zeus 
or Jupiter, the mere symbol of a now dead form of religious 
belief, but is still in sufficient use in the English Bible, and 



NOTE. 



395 



in our popular language of theology and devotion, to keep up that 
recognition of an historical continuity between the old Hebrew 
and modern Christian faiths which is essential to a complete 
understanding of the writings of Isaiah. The 'Yahveh,' or 
' JHVH,' of some scholars would not meet this requirement, nor 
indeed some other requirements of a translation. 

The other changes which I have made, are — where it is now 
known that the old rendering was wrong, and what the right 
rendering is : where, though the rendering is still conjectural, 
modern scholars have suggested a conjecture more probable than 
the old one : where the old English word has not become merely 
archaic but is now used in a different sense from that of our 
translators : where a word is too coarse for modern taste : and 
where, as far as I can judge, a really better word can be found to 
represent the original than that actually given in the Authorized 
Version. 



APPENDIX, 



ISAIAH L 

L i The Vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw con- 
cerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, 

JOTHAM, AHAZ, AND HeZEKIAH, KINGS OF JUDAH. 

2 Hear, 0 heavens, and give ear, 0 earth ; for Jehovah hath 
spoken : I have nourished and brought up children, and they 

3 have rebelled against nie, The ox knoweth his owner, and the 
ass his master's crib : but Israel doth not know, my people doth 

4 not consider. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, 
a seed of evildoers, children that corrupt themselves ; they 
have forsaken Jehovah, they have despised the Holy One of 

5 Israel, they are gone away backward. Why will ye be stricken 
any more ? ye will revolt more and more : the whole head 

6 is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot 
even unto the head there is no soundness in it ; but wounds, 
and bruises, and festering sores : they have not been closed, nor 

7 bound up, nor mollified with oil. Your country is desolate : 
your cities are burned with fire : your land, strangers devour 
it before your faces, and it is desolate, as wasted by strangers. 

8 And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard : as 

9 a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Except 
the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we 
should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto 
Gomorrah. 

io Hear the word of Jehovah, ye rulers of Sodom : give ear 
iL unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. What is the 
multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? saith Jehovah : I am 



398 



ISAIAH I. 



full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts : 
and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he- 

12 goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required 

13 this at your hand, to trample my courts ? Bring no more vain 
oblations ; incense is an abomination unto me : the new moons 
and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with : it 

14 is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and 
your appointed feasts my soul hateth : they are a burden unto 

15 me ; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your 
hands, I will hide mine eyes from you ; yea, when ye make 
many prayers, I will not hear : your hands are full of blood. 

16 Wash you, make you clean ; put away the evil of your doings 

17 from before mine eyes : cease to do evil. Learn to do well ; 
seek judgment, restrain the oppressor : right the fatherless, 
maintain the cause of the widow. 

is Come now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah : though 
your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow ; though 

19 they be red like crimson they shall be as wool. If ye be willing 

20 and obedient, ye shall feed on the good of the land ; but if ye 
refuse and rebel, the sword shall feed on you : for the mouth of 
Jehovah hath spoken it. 

21 How is the faithful city become an harlot ! It was full of 
judgment ; righteousness lodged in it : but now murderers. 

22 Thy silver is become dross : thy wine mixed with water. Thy 

23 rulers are rebels, and companions of thieves ; every one loveth 
gifts, and followeth after rewards : they right not the fatherless, 
neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them. 

24 Therefore saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One 
of Israel : Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge 

25 me of mine enemies. And I will turn my hand upon thee, and 

26 purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin. And I 
will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at 
the beginning : afterward thou shalt be called, The city of 

27 righteousness, the faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with 

28 judgment : and her converts with righteousness. And the 
destruction of the rebels and sinners shall be together : and 

29 they that forsake Jehovah shall be consumed. For they shall 
be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired : and ye shall be 

.so confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen. For ye shall 
be as an oak whose leaf fadeth : and as a garden that hath no 

31 water. And the strong shall become tow, and his work a spark : 
and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them. 



ISAIAH II. 



399 



II., III., IV. 

II. i The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning 
Judah and Jerusalem. 

2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain 
of Jehovah's house shall be established in the top of the 
mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills : and all the 

3 nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall go and say, 
Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the 
house of the God of Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways, 
and we will walk in his paths : for out of Zion shall go forth 

4 the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem. And he 
shall judge between the nations, and shall give sentence for 
many peoples ; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, 
and their spears into pruninghooks : nation shall not lift up 
sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 

5 0 house of Jacob: come ye, and let us walk in the light of 

6 Jehovah ! — For thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, 
for they be replenished from the East, and are soothsayers like 
the Philistines : and they please themselves in the children of 

7 strangers. Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is 
there any end of their treasures : their land also is full of horses, 

8 neither is there any end of their chariots. Their land also is 
full of idols : they worship the work of their own hands, that 

9 which their own fingers have made. And the mean man boweth 
down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive 

10 them not. Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust ; for 
n fear of Jehovah, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty 

looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall 
be bowed down : and Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day. 

12 For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every thing 
proud and lofty : and upon every thing lifted up ; and it shall 

13 be brought low. And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are 

14 high and lifted up : and upon all the oaks of Bashan. And upon 
all the high mountains : and upon all the hills that are lifted 

15 up. And upon every high tower : and upon every fenced wall. 

16 And upon all the ships of Tarshish : and upon all their pleasant 

17 ensigns. And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the 
haughtiness of man shall be made low : and Jehovah alone shall 

is be exalted in that day. And the idols shall utterly pass away. 
19 And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves 
of the earth : for fear of Jehovah, and for the glory of his 



400 



ISAIAH III 



so majesty, when he arise th to shake terribly the earth. In that 
day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, 
which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles 

21 and to the bats : to go into the clefts of the rocks, and into 
the tops of the ragged rocks ; for fear of Jehovah, and for the 
glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. 

22 Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils : for wherein 
is he to be accounted of? 

III. i For, behold, the Lord, the Loed of hosts, doth take away 
from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff : the whole 

2 stay of bread, and the whole stay of water. The mighty man, 
and the man of war : the judge, and the prophet, and the 

3 diviner, and the ancient. The captain of fifty, and the honour- 
able man : and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the 

4 skilled enchanter. And I will give children to be their princes : 

5 and babes shall rule over them. And the people shall be 
oppressed, every one by another, and every one his neighbour : 
the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and 

6 the base against the honourable. When a man shall take hold 
of his brother of the house of his father, saying, Thou hast 
clothing, be thou our ruler; and let this ruin be under thy 

7 hand: in that day shall he swear, saying, I will not be an healer, 
for in my house is neither bread nor clothing : make me not a 

s ruler of the people. For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen : 
because their tongue and their doings are against Jehovah, to 

9 provoke the eyes of his glory. The show of their countenance 
doth witness against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom, 
they hide it not : woe unto their soul ! for they have rewarded 

10 evil unto themselves. Say ye to the righteous, that it shall 
be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. 

n Woe unto the wicked ! it shall be ill with him : for the reward 

12 of his hands shall be given him. 0 my people, children are 
their oppressors, and women rule over them : 0 my people, thy 
leaders misguide thee, and destroy the way of thy paths. 

13 Jehovah riseth up to plead : and standeth to judge the people, 
u Jehovah will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, 

and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard, 

15 the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye that ye 
beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? 
saith the Lord God of hosts. 

16 Moreover Jehovah saith, because the daughters of Zion are 
haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes : 
walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with 



ISAIAH IV., V. 



17 their feet; therefore Jehovah will make bald the crown of the 
head of the daughters of Zion, and Jehovah will discover their 
shame. 

is In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their 

19 anklets, and the nets, and the crescents ; the ear-drops, and 

20 the bracelets, and the veils ; the head-bands, and the feet-chains, 
•2i and the girdles, and the scent-boxes, and the amulets ; the rings, 

22 and the nose jewels, the holiday suits of apparel, and the 

23 mantles, and the wimples, and the purses ; the mirrors, and the 

24 fine linen, and the turbans, and the cloaks. And it shall come 
to pass, that instead of perfume there shall be stench ; and 
instead of a girdle a rope, and instead of well curled hair bald- 
ness ; and instead of a costly robe, a girding of sackcloth : and 

25 branding instead of beauty. Thy men shall fall by the sword, 

26 and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and 
mourn : and she, being desolate, shall sit on the ground. 

IV. i And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, 
saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel : 
only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach. 

2 In that day shall the branch of Jehovah be beautiful and glo- 
rious : and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely 

3 for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass, 
that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, 
shall be called holy ; even every one that is written among the 

4 living in Jerusalem : when the Lord shall have washed away the 
filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of 
Jerusalem from the midst thereof, by the spirit of judgment, 

5 and by the spirit of burning. And Jehovah will create upon 
every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a 
cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by 

6 night : for upon all the glory shall be a defence. And there 
shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the 
heat : and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm 
and from rain. 



V. 

V. i Now will I sing of my Well-beloved, a song of my Beloved 
touching his vineyard : my Well-beloved hath a vineyard in a 

2 very fruitful hill. And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones 
thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower 
in the midst of it, and also hewed out a wine-fat therein : and he 
looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild 

D D 



402 



ISAIAH V. 



3 grapes. And now, 0 inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of 
Judah : judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. 

4 What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have 
not done in it ? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring 

5 forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes ? And now go to ; I 
will tell you what I will do to my vineyard : I will take away 
the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up ; and break down 

6 the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down. And I will lay 
it waste : it shall not be pruned, nor digged ; but it shall 
grow up to briers and thorns : I will also command the clouds 

7 that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lokd 
of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant 
plant : and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression ; for 
righteousness, but behold a cry. 

s Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, 
till there be no place, and ye are left to dwell alone in the midst 
9 of the earth ! In mine ears saith the Lokd of hosts, Of a truth 
many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without in- 
10 habitant. Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and 

an homer of seed shall yield an ephah. 
n W T oe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they 
may follow strong drink : that continue until night, till wine 

12 inflame them ! And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and 
pipe, and wine, are in their feasts : but they regard not the 
work of Jehovah, neither consider the operation of his hands. 

13 Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have 
no knowledge : and their honourable men are famished, and their 

14 multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore hell hath enlarged 
herself, and opened her mouth without measure : and their 
glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that re- 

15 joiceth therein, shall descend into it. And the mean man shall 
be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled : and 

16 the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled. But the Lokd of hosts 
shall be exalted in judgment : and God that is holy shall be 

i? sanctified in righteousness. Then shall the lambs feed after 
their manner, and the waste places of the fat ones shall stran- 
gers eat. 

38 Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity; 

i» and sin as it were with a cart rope : that say, Let him make 
speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it : and let the 
counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh, and come, that we 
may know it ! 

20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil : that put 



ISAIAH V., VI. 



4°3- 



darkness for light, and light for darkness ; that put bitter for 
sweet, and sweet for bitter ! 
21 Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes : and prudent 
in their own sight ! 

Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine : and men of 

23 strength to mingle strong drink. Which justify the wicked for 
reward : and take away the righteousness of the righteous from 
him ! 

24 Therefore as the tongue of fire devoureth the stubble, and 
the flaming grass sinks down, so their root shall be as rotten- 
ness, and their blossom shall go up as dust : because they 
have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the 

25 word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore is the anger of 
Jehovah kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth 
his hand against them, and hath smitten them, and the hills 
did tremble, and their carcases were as th« sweepings in the 
midst of the streets : for all this his anger is not turned away, 

26 but his hand is stretched out still. And he hath lifted up an 
ensign to the nations from far, and hath hissed unto them from 
the end of the earth : and, behold they come right speedily. 

27 None is faint nor stumbling among them, none doth slumber 
nor sleep : neither is the girdle- of their loins loosed, nor the 

28 latchet of their shoes broken. Whose arrows are sharp, and 
all their bows bent : their horses' hoofs are counted like flint, 

29 and their wheels like a whirlwind. Their roaring is like that 
of a lioness : they roar like young lions, and growl, and lay 
hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall 

30 deliver it. And in that day they shall roar against them like 
the roaring of the sea : and if one look unto the land, behold 
darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened by the clouds 
thereof. 



VI. 

VI. 1 In the year that king Uzziah died, then I saw the Lord 
sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up : and his train filled 

2 the temple. About him stood the seraphim : each one had six 
wings : with twain he covered his face, and with twain he 

3 covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried 
unto another, and said, Holy ! holy ! holy ! is Jehovah Lord of 

4 hosts : the whole earth is full of his glory. And the founda- 
tions of the threshold trembled at the voice of him that cried ; 

5 and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me ! 

d d 2 



ISAIAH VI, VII 



for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I 
dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips : for mine eyes 

6 have seen the King, Jehovah Lord of hosts. Then flew one of 
the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand : which he 

7 had taken with the tongs from, off the altar. And he laid it upon 
my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips : and thine 

8 iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. Then I heard the 
voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go 

„ for us ? Then said I, Here am I ; send me. And he said, Go, 
and say to this people : Hear ye indeed, but understand not ; 

10 and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this 
people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes : 
lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and 

11 understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. Then 
said I, Lord, how long ? And he answered, Until the cities be 
wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and 

12 the land be utterly desolate, and Jehovah have removed men 
far away : and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the 

13 land. And though there be only a tenth part in it, even that shall 
be again consumed : yet as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose 
stocks remain to them, when they are felled, so the holy seed 
shall be the stock thereof. 



VII. 

VII. i And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, 
the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Kezin the king of Syria, 
with Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to 
Jerusalem to take it, but he was not able to take it. 

2 And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate 
with Ephraim : and his heart was moved, and the heart of his 
people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. 

3 Then said Jehovah unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, 
thou, and Shear-jashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of 

4 the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller's field ; and say 
unto him, Take heed, and be quiet ; fear not, neither be faint- 
hearted, for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the 
fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah. 

5 Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken 

6 evil counsel against thee, saying, Let us go up against Judah, 
and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us : and set a 
king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal ; — 

7 Thus saith the Lord Jehovah : it shall not stand, neither 



ISAIAH VII 



405 



8 shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and 
the head of Damascus is Rezin : and within threescore and five 

9 years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people. And 
the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is 
Remaliah's son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be 
established. 

10 11 Moreover Jehovah spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee 
a sign of Jehovah thy God : ask it either in the depth or in the 
12 height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I 
m tempt Jehovah. And he said, Hear ye now, 0 house of David: 
is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my 

14 God also ? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign : 
Behold, a maiden shall conceive, and bear a son, and she shall 

15 call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat : 
when he knows to refuse the evil, and choose the good. 

16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose 
the good : the land whose two kings thou fearest shall be 
desolate. 

17 Jehovah shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and 
upon thy father's house, days that have not come from the day 
that Ephraim departed from Judah : even the king of Assyria. 

is And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah shall hiss 
for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, 

19 and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall 
come, and shall rest all of them in the craggy valleys, and in 
the holes of the rocks, and upon all hedges, and upon all 

20 pastures. In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor 
that is hired from beyond the River, with the king of Assyria, 
the head, and the hair of the feet : and it shall also cut off the 

21 beard. And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man 

22 shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep ; and it shall come 
to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall 
eat butter : for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left 

23 in the land. And it shall come to pass in that day, that every 
place where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silver- 

24 lings : shall be for briers and thorns. With arrows and with 
bows shall men come thither : because all the land shall become 

25 briers and thorns. And on all hills that were digged with the 
mattock, thou shalt not go thither for fear of briers and 
thorns : but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for 
the treading of sheep. 



40 6 



ISAIAH VIII 



VIII. 1— IX. 7. 

YIII. i And Jehovah said unto me, take thee a great tablet : and 
write on it, with a man's style, Haste- plundee — Speed-spoil. 

2 And I took unto me faithful witnesses to record : Uriah the 

3 priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah. And I went unto 
the prophetess, and she conceived, and bare a son ; then said 

4 Jehovah to me, Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz. For be- 
fore the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and my 
mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall 
be taken away before the king of Assyria. 

5 6 Then Jehovah spake unto me again, saying, Forasmuch as 
this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly : and 

7 rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah's son ; Now therefore, behold, 
the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the River, strong 
and many, even the king of Assyria, and all his glory : and he 
shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks ; 

8 And he shall pass over into Judah, he shall overflow and go 
over, he shall reach to the neck : and the stretching out of his 
wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, 0 Immanuel. 

9 Associate yourselves, 0 ye peoples, and ye shall be broken in 
pieces ; and give ear, all ye of far countries : gird yourselves, 
and ye shall be broken in pieces, gird yourselves, and ye shall 

10 be broken in pieces. Take counsel together, and it shall come 
to nought : speak the word, and it shall not stand, for God is 
with us. 

11 For Jehovah spake thus to me with a strong hand : and in- 
structed me that I should not walk in the way of this people? 

12 saying, Say ye not, A confederacy, of every thing of which this 
people shall say, A confederacy : neither fear ye their fear, nor 

13 be afraid. Sanctify the Loed of hosts himself : and let him be 

14 your fear, and let him be your dread. And he shall be for a 
sanctuary: but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of 
offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to 

is the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall 
stumble : and shall fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be 
taken. 

io Bind up the testimony : seal the precept among my disciples. 

j 7 And I will wait upon Jehovah, that hideth his face from the 

is house of Jacob : and I will look for him. Behold, I and the 
children whom Jehovah hath given me are for signs and for 
tokens in Israel : from the Loed of hosts, which dwelleth in 

19 mount Zion. And when they shall say unto you, seek unto 



ISAIAH IX. 



them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and 
that mutter : should not a people seek unto their God ? For 

20 the Living should they seek to the dead ? To the precept and to 
the testimony : if they speak not according to this word, it is 

21 because there is no light in them. And they shall pass through 
the land hardly bestead and hungry : and it shall come to pass, 
that when they are hungry, they shall fret themselves, and 

22 shall curse their king and their God, and look upward. And 
they shall look unto the earth : and behold trouble and dark- 
ness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be driven into the 
darkness. 

IX. i Yet her dimness and anguish shall not be for ever, for 
as in the former time he hath brought low the land of Zebulun 
and the land of Naphtali, so in the latter time he shall make 
her glorious : by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of 
the nations. 

2 The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light : 
they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them 

3 hath the light shined. Thou has multiplied the nation, thou 
hast increased their joy: they joy before thee as with the joy 

4 in harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For 
thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his 
shoulder, the rod of his task-master : as in the day of Midian. 

5 For all the warrior's armour with its clang, and his garments 

6 rolled in blood, shall be for burning and food for fire. For 
unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given ; and the govern- 
ment shall be upon his shoulder : and his name shall be called 
Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince 

7 of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there 
shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his 
kingdom ; to order it, and to establish it with judgment and 
with justice : from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the 
Lokd of hosts will perform this. 



IX. 8— X. 4. 

IX. 8 The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon 

9 Israel. And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the 
inhabitant of Samaria : that say in the pride and stoutness of 

10 heart, The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn 
stones : the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them 

u into cedars. And Jehovah shall set up the adversaries of Eezin 



8 



ISAIAH IX., X. 



against him : and join his enemies together. The Syrians before, 
and the Philistines behind, and they shall devour Israel with 
open mouth : for all this his anger is not turned away, but his 
hand is stretched out still. 

For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them : 
neither do they seek the Lord of hosts. Therefore Jehovah 
will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm tree and rush, in 
one day. The ancient and honourable, he is the head : and 
the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. For the leaders 
of this people misguide them : and they that are led of them 
are destroyed. Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their 
young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and 
widows : for every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and 
every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not 
turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. 

For wickedness burneth as the fire, it shall devour the briers 
and thorns : and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and 
they shall go up in volumes of smoke. Through the wrath of 
the Lord of hosts is the land burned up : and the people shall 
be as the fuel of the fire : no man shall spare his brother. And 
he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry, and he shall 
eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied : they shall 
eat every man the flesh of his own arm: Manasseh, Ephraim ; 
and Ephraim, Manasseh ; and they together shall be against 
Judah : for all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand 
is stretched out still. 

1 Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees ; and to 
the scribes that prescribe oppression ; to turn aside the needy 
from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of 
my people ; that widows may be their prey, and that they may 
rob the fatherless ! And what will ye do in the day of visita- 
tion, and in the desolation which shall come from far? To 
whom will ye flee for help ? and where will ye leave your 
glory ? Without me, they shall bow down under the prisoners, 
and they shall fall under the slain : for all this his anger is not 
turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. 



X. 5— XII. 6. 

Woe to the Assyrian ! the rod of mine anger : and the staff 
in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an 
hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I 



ISAIAH X. 



give him a charge : to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and 
7 to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Howbeit he 

meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so : but it is in his 
s heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few. For he saith : 

9 Are not my princes altogether kings ? Is not Calno as Carche- 
mish ? Is not Hamath as Arpad ? Is not Samaria as Damascus ? 

10 As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the gods, whose graven 
images were more than those of Jerusalem and of Samaria : 

11 shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her gods, so do 
to Jerusalem and her idols ? 

12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when Jehovah hath 
performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem : 
I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, 

is and the glory of his high looks. For he saith, By the strength 
of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am pru- 
dent : and I have removed the bounds of the nations, and have 
robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants 

14 like a valiant man. And my hand hath found as a nest the 
riches of the nations ; and as one gathereth eggs that are left, 
have I gathered all the earth : and there was none that moved 

is the wing, or opened the mouth, or chirped. Shall the axe boast 
itself against him that heweth therewith ? Or shall the saw 
magnify itself against him that handleth it ? As if the rod 
should wield him that lifteth it up, or as if the staff should lift 

16 up the man. Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send 
among his fat ones leanness : and under his glory he shall 

17 kindle a burning, like the burning of a fire. And the Light of 
Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame : and it 
shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day. 

is And it shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful 
field, both soul and body : and they shall be as when a sick 

19 man fainteth. And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be 
few, that a child may write them down. 

•20 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of 
Israel, and such as are escarped of the house of Jacob, shall no 
more again stay upon him that smote them : but shall stay 

21 upon Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. The remnant 
shall return, the remnant of Jacob : unto the mighty God. 

22 For though thy people, 0 Israel, be as the sand of the sea, 
only a remnant of them shall return : destruction is decreed, 

23 and shall flow forth in justice. For the Lord God of hosts hath 
made a decree of destruction, in the midst of all the land. 

24 Therefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts, 0 my people that 



ISAIAH X, XI 



dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian : who shall smite 
thee with a rod, and shall lift up his staff against thee, after the 
25 manner of Egypt. For yet a very little while ; and the indig- 
2G nation shall cease, and mine anger in their destruction. And 
the Loed of hosts shall raise up a scourge for him, as in the 
slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb : and his rod shall be 
upon the sea, and he shall lift it up after the manner of Egypt. 

27 And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be 
taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy 
neck : and the yoke shall be broken from fatness. 

28 He is come to Aiath, he is passed through Migron : at Mich- 

29 mash he hath laid up his baggage. They have passed the Pass : 
they have taken up their night-quarters at Geba ; Eamah is 

30 afraid ; Gibeah of Saul is fled. Lift up thy voice, 0 daughter 
of Gallim : cause it to be heard unto Laish, answer her Ana- 

31 thoth. Maclmenah is gone away : the inhabitants of Gebini 

32 gather themselves to flee. He yet halteth at Nob that day : 
he shakes his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion, 
the hill of Jerusalem. 

33 Behold the Lord, the Lokd of hosts, doth lop the top branch 
with terror : and the high of stature are hewn down, and the 

34 haughty humbled. And he shall cut down the thickets of the 
forest with iron : and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one. 

XI. i And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stem of 

2 Jesse : and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the spirit 
of Jehovah shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and under- 
standing, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of know- 

3 ledge and of the fear of Jehovah. And he shall delight in the fear 
of Jehovah : and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, 

4 neither decide after the hearing of his ears. But with righteous- 
ness shall he judge the poor, and decide with equity for the 
meek of the earth : and he shall smite the earth with the rod of 
his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the 

5 wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and 

6 faithfulness the girdle of his reins. And the wolf shall dwell 
with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid : 
and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together ; and a 

7 little child shall lead them. And the cow and the she bear 
shall feed, their young ones shall lie down together : and the 

8 lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall 
play on the hole of the asp : and the weaned child shall put his 

9 hand on the den of the adder. They shall not hurt nor destroy 
in all my holy mountain : for the earth shall be full of the 



ISAIAH XI, XII, XIII 



10 knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. And in 
that day there shall be a root of Jesse which shall stand for an 
ensign to the peoples ; to it shall the nations seek : and his 

11 dwelling-place shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in 
that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second 
time to recover the remnant of his people : which shall be left, 
from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, 
and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from 

12 the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the 
nations, and shall assemble the outcast sons of Israel : and shall 
gather together the dispersed daughters of Judah, from the four 

13 corners of the earth. The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, 
and the hostile ones of Judah shall be cut off : Ephraim shall 
not envy Judah, and Judah shall not be hostile to Ephraim. 

u But they shall sweep down upon the shoulders of the Philistines 
towards the sea, they shall spoil the children of the east 
together : they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab, and 

is the children of Ammon shall obey them. And Jehovah shall 
utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea, and with his 
mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the Eiver : and he 
shall smite it into seven streams, and make men go over dry- 

16 shod. And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his 
people, which shall be left, from Assyria : like as it was to 
Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt. 

XII. i And in that day thou shalt say, 0 Jehovah, I will praise 
thee ; though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned 

2 away, and thou comfortest me. Behold, God is my salvation, I 
will trust and not be afraid : for the Lokd JEHOVAH is my 

3 strength and my song, and he is become my salvation. There- 
fore with joy shall ye draw water : out of the wells of salvation. 

4 And in that day shall ye say, Praise Jehovah, call upon his 
name, declare his doings among the nations : make mention that 

5 his name is exalted. Sing unto Jehovah ; for he hath done 

6 excellent things : let this be known in all the earth. Cry out 
and shout, thou inhabitress of Zion : for great is the Holy One 
of Israel in the midst of thee. 

XIII. 1— XIV. 27. 

XIII. i The burden of Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz 

did SEE. 

2 Lift ye up a banner upon the bare mountain ! Exalt thy voice 
unto them, shake the hand, that they may go into the gates of 



412 



ISAIAH XIII. 



3 the nobles ! I have commanded my consecrated ones : I have 
also called my mighty ones for mine anger, my proudly rejoic- 

4 ing ones. The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as 
of a great people ; the noise of a tumult of kingdoms of nations 
gathered together ! The Lord of hosts mustering the host of 

5 battle ! They come from a far country, from the end of heaven : 
Jehovah and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the 

6 whole earth. Howl ye ; for the day of Jehovah is at hand : 

7 it shall come as a mighty stroke from the Almighty. Therefore 
shall all hands fall down : and every man's heart shall melt. 

8 And they shall tremble ; pangs and throes shall take hold of 
them ; they shall writhe as a woman that travaileth : they 
shall be amazed, every one at another, their faces shall be faces 

9 of flame. Behold, the day of Jehovah cometh, terrible both 
with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the earth desolate : and to 

io destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven, 
and the constellations thereof, shall not give their light : the 
sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall 

n not cause her light to shine. And I will visit upon the world 
its evil, and upon the wicked their iniquity: and I will cause 
the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the 

12 haughtiness of the terrible. I will make men more precious 

13 than fine gold: even man than the gold of Ophir. Therefore I 
will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her 
place : in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his 

14 fierce anger. And it shall be as the chased roe, and as sheep 
with none to gather them : they shall every man turn to his 

15 own people, and flee every one into his own land. Every one 
that is found shall be thrust through : and every one that is 

16 taken shall fall by the sword. And their children shall be 
dashed to pieces before their eyes : their houses shall be spoiled, 

17 and their wives ravished. Behold I will stir up the Medes 
against them : which regard not silver, and as for gold, they 

is delight not in it. And their bows shall dash the youths to 
pieces : and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb, 

19 their eye shall not spare children. And Babylon, the glory of 
kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency : shall be as 

20 when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be 
inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to gene- 
ration : neither shall the Arab pitch tent there ; neither shall 

21 the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the 
desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of owls : 
and the daughters of the ostrich shall dwell there, and satyrs 



ISAIAH XIV. 



4i3 



22 shall dance there. And hyenas shall cry in their palaces, and 
jackals in their pleasure houses : and her time is near to come, 
and her days shall not be prolonged. 

XIV. 1 For Jehovah will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet 
choose Israel, and cause them to rest in their own land : and 
the strangers shall be joined with them, and shall cleave to the 

2 house of Jacob. And the nations shall take them, and bring 
them to their place ; and the house of Israel shall possess them 
in the land of Jehovah for servants and handmaids : and they 
shall take them captives whose captives they were ; and they 
shall rule over their oppressors. 

3 And it shall come to pass, in the day that Jehovah shall give 
thee rest from thy labour, and from thy trouble ; and from the 

4 hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve : that thou shalt 
take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and say ; How 

5 hath the oppressor ceased ! the exactor of gold ceased ! Jehovah 
hath broken the staff of the wicked, the sceptre of the rulers ; 

6 which struck the peoples in wrath with a continual stroke, 
which trod down the nations in anger, with a tread that 

7 none hindered. The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet : they 

8 break forth into singing. Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and 
the cedars of Lebanon : (saying,) now that thou art laid down, 

9 no feller shall come up against us. Hell from beneath is moved 
for thee, to meet thee at thy coming : it stirreth up the giant- 
shades for thee, all the chief ones of the earth ; it hath raised 

10 up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they 
shall speak and say unto thee : Art thou also become weak as 

n we ? art thou become like unto us ? Thy pomp is brought 
down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols : the worm is 

12 spread under thee, and the earth-worms cover thee. How art 
thou fallen from heaven, 0 bright star, son of the morning ! 
How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the 

13 nations ! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into 
heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God : and I 
will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the 

u north : I will ascend above the heights of the clouds : I will be 

15 like the Most High. But thou shalt only be brought down to 

16 hell : to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly 
look upon thee, and consider thee : (saying,) Is this the man 
that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms ? 

17 That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities 

18 thereof: that loosed not his prisoners homewards ? All the 
kings of the nations, all of them ; lie in state, every one in his 



414 



ISAIAH XIV. 



19 own house : but thou art cast out of thy grave, like an abomi- 
nable branch ; wrapped in those that are slain, that are thrust 
through with the sword : that go down to the stones of the pit, as 

20 a carcase trodden under feet. Thou shalt not be joined with them 
in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy 
people : the seed of evil doers shall be named no more for ever. 

21 Prepare slaughter for his children, for the iniquity of their 
fathers : that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the 

22 face of the world with cities. For I will rise up against them, 
saith the Lord of hosts ; and will cut off from Babylon name, 

23 and remnant, and son, and son's son, saith Jehovah. I will 
also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water : 
and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the 
Lord of hosts. 

24 The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying : Surely as I have 
thought so shall it come to pass ; and as I have purposed so 

25 shall it stand : that I will break the Assyrian in my land, and 
upon my mountains tread him under foot : then shall his yoke 
depart from off them, and his burden depart from off their 

26 shoulders. This is the purpose that is purposed upon the 
whole earth : and this is the hand that is stretched out upon 

27 all the nations. For the Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who 
stall disannul it ? And it is his hand that is stretched out, and 
who shall turn it back ? 



XIY. 28. 

XI Y. 28 In the year that king Ahaz died was this burden. 

29 Rejoice not thou, whole Philistia, because the rod that smote 
thee is broken : for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a 

30 basilisk, and his fruit shall be a flying serpent. And the first- 
born of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall lie down in 
safety : and I will kill thy root with famine, and he shall slay 

si thy remnant. Howl, 0 gate ; cry, 0 city ; thou, whole 
Philistia, art dissolved : for there cometh from the north a 

32 smoke, and there is no straggler in his hosts. What shall one 
then answer the messengers of the nation ? That Jehovah hath 
founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall take refuge in it. 



ISAIAH XV, XVI. 



4*5 



XV., XVI. 

XV. 1 The burden of Moab. 

Verily in the night Ar-Moab is laid waste, is brought to 
silence ! Verily in the night Kir-Moab is laid waste, is brought 

2 to silence! He is gone up to Bajith, and to Dibon, the high places, 
to weep : Moab doth howl over Nebo, and over Medeba ; on all 

3 their heads baldness, and every beard cut off! In their streets 
they gird themselves with sackcloth : on the tops of their houses, 
and in their squares, every one doth wail, weeping abundantly. 

4 And Heshbon doth cry, and Eleaieh ; their voice is heard even 
unto Jahaz : even the armed soldiers of Moab cry out; his soul 

5 trembleth in him. My heart crieth out for Moab ; his fugitives 
flee unto Zoar, like an heifer of three years old : for by the 
ascent of Luhith they go up with weeping ; for in the way of 

6 Horonaim they raise a cry of despair. For the waters of 
Nimrim are desolate : for the grass is withered, the young 

7 grass faileth, there is no green thing. Therefore the abundance 
they have gotten, and that which they have laid up, do they 

s carry away over the brook of the willows. For the cry is gone 
round about the borders of Moab ; the wailing thereof unto 
9 Eglaim, and the wailing thereof unto Beer-elim. For the 
• waters of Dimon shall be full of blood ; for I will bring more 
woes upon Dimon : a lion upon him that escapeth of Moab, 
and upon the remnant of the land. 

XVI. 1 Send ye the lamb to the ruler of the land, from Selah 
through the wilderness : unto the mount of the daughter of Zion. 

2 For it shall be, that, as a wandering bird cast out of the nest : 

3 so the daughters of Moab shall be at the fords of Arnon. Take 
counsel, execute judgment : make thy shadow as the night in 
the midst of the noonday ; hide the outcasts ; betray not the 

4 fugitive. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab ; be thou a 
covert to them from the face of the spoiler : for the extortioner 
is at an end, the spoiler ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed 

5 out of the land. And in mercy shall the throne be established, 
and one shall sit upon it in truth in the tabernacle of David : 

6 judging, and seeking justice, and hasting righteousness. We 
have heard the pride of Moab, the very proud : his haughtiness, 

7 and his pride, and his wrath, — his lying boasts. Therefore 
shall Moab howl for Moab, all of it shall howl : for the raisins 

8 of Kir-hareseth shall ye mourn ; surely they are stricken. For 
the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah ; the 



ISAIAH XVI, XVII 



lords of the nations break down the choice plants thereof, they 
reached unto Jazer, they strayed into the wilderness : her 

9 branches were stretched out, they went over the sea. There- 
fore I will bewail with the weeping of Jazer the vine of Sibrnah ; 
I will water thee with my tears, 0 Heshbon, and Elealeh : for 
the battle-shout is fallen on thy summer fruits and thy harvest. 

10 And gladness is taken away, and joy from the plentiful field ; 
and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither shall 
there be shouting : the treaders shall tread out no wine in their 

n presses ; I have made their shouting to cease. Wherefore my 
bowels shall sound like an harp for Moab : and mine inward 

12 parts for Kir-haresh. And it shall come to pass, when it is seen 
that Moab is weary on the high place : that he shall come to 

13 his sanctuaiy to pray ; but he shall not prevail. This is the 

14 word that Jehovah spake concerning Moab of old. But now 
Jehovah hath spoken, saying, within three years, as the years 
of an hireling, and the glory of Moab shall be put to shame, 
with all that great multitude : and the remnant shall be very 
small and feeble. 



XVII., XVIII. 
XVII. i The burden of Damascus. 

Behold Damascus is taken away from being a city : and it 
2 shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of Aroer are forsaken : they 
shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make 
them afraid. The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and 
the kingdom from Damascus : and the remnant of Syria shall 
be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the Loed of 
hosts. 

And in that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob 
shall be made thin : and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. 
And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the corn, 
and reapeth the ears with his arm : and it shall be as he that 
gathereth ears in the valley of Eephaim. Yet gleanings shall 
be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree ; two or three 
berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the 
outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith Jehovah God of Israel. 
i At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall 
8 have respect to the Holy One of Israel. And he shall not look 
to the altars, the work of his hands : neither shall respect that 
which his fingers have made, either the images of Astarte, or 



ISAIAH XVII, XVIII 



4*7 



9 the pillars of the Sun. In that day shall his strong cities be as 
a forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch, which they leave 
because of the children of Israel: and there shall be desolation. 

10 Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast 
not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore thou 
shalt plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips : 

11 in the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morn- 
ing shalt thou make thy seed to nourish : but the harvest shall 
fly away in the day of grief and desperate sorrow. 

12 0 the noise of many peoples, they make a noise like the noise 
of the seas : and the rush of nations, they rush like the rushing 

13 of mighty waters ! The nations shall rush like the rushing of 
many waters ; but He shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far 
off : and they shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains 
before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind. 

14 And behold at eveningtide trouble ; and before the morning he 
is not : this is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of 
them that rob us. 

XVIII. 1 0 land rustling with wings : which bordereth on the 

2 rivers of Ethiopia ! That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in 
bulrush boats upon the waters ! — Go back, ye swift messengers, to 
a nation tall and comely, to a people terrible from their beginning 
hitherto : a nation that meteth out and treadeth down, whose 

3 land the rivers divide ! All ye inhabitants of the world, and 
dwellers on the earth : see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign 
on the mountains ; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. 

4 For so Jehovah said unto me, I will take my rest, and 
I will look on in my dwelling-place : like a clear heat 
upon herbage, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. 

5 For afore the harvest, when the bloom is finished, and the 
flower becomes a ripening grape, he shall cut off the sprigs 
with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches. 

6 They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and 
to the beasts of the earth : and the fowls shall summer upon 
them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them. 

7 In that time shall a present be brought unto the Loed of hosts, 
from a people tall and comely, and from a people terrible from 
their beginning hitherto : a nation that meteth out and treadeth 
down ; whose land the rivers divide ; to the place of the name 
of the Loed of hosts, the mount Zion. 



E E 



418 



ISAIAH XIX. 



XIX. 

XIX. i The bukden of Egypt. 

Behold, Jehovah rideth upon a swift cloud, and cometh into 
Egypt : and the idols of Egypt are moved at his presence, 

2 and the heart of Egypt doth melt within him. And I will set 
Egypt against Egypt, and they shall fight every one against his 
brother, and every one against his neighbour : city against city, 

3 and kingdom against kingdom. And the spirit of Egypt shall 
fail in the midst thereof, and I will destroy the counsel thereof : 
and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to 

4 them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards. And the 
Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a cruel lord : and 
a fierce king shall rule over them, saith the Lord, the Lord 

5 of hosts. And the waters shall fail from the sea : and the river 

6 shall be wasted and dried up. And the rivers shall become 
putrid, and the canals of Egypt shall be emptied and dried up : 

7 the reeds and flags shall wither. The meadows by the river, by 
the border of the river, and every thing sown by the river, shall 

8 wither, be driven away, and be no more. The fishers also shall 
mourn, and all they that cast angle into the river shall lament : 

9 and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish. And 
they that work in combed flax shall be confounded : and they 

10 that weave white cotton. And the pillars of the land shall be 
broken down : and all her labouring men shall be grieved in 

n heart. The princes of Zoan are utterly fools, the counsel of the 
wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish : how say ye 
unto Pharaoh, I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient 

12 kings ? Where are they ? where are thy wise men ? And let 
them tell thee now : and let them know what the Loed of hosts 

is hath purposed upon Egypt. The princes of Zoan are become 
fools, the princes of Noph are deceived : they have also misled 

14 Egypt, they that are the stay of the tribes thereof. Jehovah hath 
mingled a spirit of reeling in the midst thereof: and they have 
caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man 

15 staggereth in his vomit. Neither shall there be any work for 
Egypt : which the head or tail, branch or rush, may do. 

16 In that day shall Egypt be like unto women : and it shall be 
afraid, and fear, because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord 

it of hosts, which he shaketh over it. And the land of Judah 
shall be a terror unto Egypt, every one that maketh mention 




ISAIAH XIX., XX. 



419 



thereof shall be afraid in himself : because of the counsel of the 
Lord of hosts, which he hath determined against it. 
is In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the 
language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts : one shall 

19 be called, The city of destruction. In that day shall there be 
an altar to Jehovah in the midst of the land of Egypt : and a 

20 pillar at the border thereof to Jehovah. And it shall be for a 
sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of 
Egypt : for they shall cry unto Jehovah because of the oppres- 
sors, and he shall send them a saviour, and a great one, and 

21 he shall deliver them. And Jehovah shall be known to Egypt, 
and the Egyptians shall know Jehovah in that day : and shall 
do sacrifice and oblation, and shall vow vows unto the Lord, and 

22 perform it. And Jehovah shall smite Egypt ; he shall smite and 
heal it : and they shall return to Jehovah, and he shall be en- 
treated of them, and shall heal them. 

23 In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, 
and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian 
into Assyria : and Egypt shall serve Jehovah with Assyria. 

24 In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with 

25 Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth : whom the Lord 
of hosts shall bless, saying : Blessed be Egypt my people, and 
Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance. 



XX. 

XX. 1 In the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod, when Sargon 
the king of Assyria sent him, and fought against Ashdod, and took 

2 it ; at the same time spake Jehovah by Isaiah the son of Amoz, 
saying, Go, and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put 
off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and 
barefoot. 

3 And Jehovah said, like as my servant Isaiah hath walked 
naked and barefoot, a three years sign and wonder upon Egypt 

4 and upon Ethiopia ; so shall the king of Assyria lead away the 
Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and 
old, naked and barefoot, even utterly stripped, to the shame of 

5 Egypt. And they shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia 

6 their expectation, and of Egypt their glory. And the inhabi- 
tants of this coast shall say in that day, Behold, such is our 
expectation, whither we fled for help, to be delivered from the 
king of Assyria : and how shall we escape ? 



E E 2 



420 



ISAIAH XXI. 



XXL 

XXI. i The burden of the Desert of the Sea. 

As whirlwinds in the south pass through ; so it conieth from 

2 the desert, from a terrible land ! A grievous vision is declared 
unto me : the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the 
spoiler spoileth ; — Go up, 0 Elam : besiege, 0 Media ; all the 

3 sighing thereof have I made to cease. Therefore are my loins 
filled with pain ; pangs have taken hold upon me, as the pangs 
of a woman that travaileth : I writhe so that I cannot hear ; I 

4 shudder so that I cannot see. My heart panteth, fearfulness 

5 affrighteth me : the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear 
unto me. Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink : 
arise, ye princes, anoint the shield ! 

6 For thus hath the Lord said unto me : Go, set a watchman, 

7 let him declare what he seeth. And he saw cavalry, horse- 

8 men two and two, riders on asses, riders on camels : and he 
hearkened diligently with much heed. And he cried, A lion ! 0 
Lord, I stand continually upon the" watch-tower in the daytime, 

9 and I am set in my ward whole nights : and, behold, here come 
mounted men, horsemen two and two. And he spake again, and 
said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen ; and all the graven images of 

10 her gods he hath broken unto the ground. 0 my threshing, 
and the corn of my floor : that which I have heard of the Lord 
of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you. 

n The Bur- Qne calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night ? 

den of . n 

Dumah. 12 The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the 
night : if ye will inquire, inquire ye ; return, come again, 
is The Bur- j n the thickets in Arabia shall ye lodge, 0 ye travelling 

den upon . . . . 

Arabia., 14 companies ofDedanim. The inhabitants of the land of Tema 
bring water to him that is thirsty, they come to meet the 

15 fugitive with bread. For they flee from the face of the swords, 
from the drawn sword, and from the bent bow, and from the 
grievousness of war. 

16 For thus saith the Lord unto me : Within a year, according 
to the years of an hireling, and all the glory of Kedar shall fail ; 

17 and the residue of the number of archers, the mighty men of 
the children of Kedar, shall become few : for Jehovah the God 
of Israel hath spoken it. 



ISAIAH XXII. 



XXII. 

XXII. i The burden of the Valley of Yision. 

What aileth tliee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the 

2 housetops? Thou that art full of stirs, a tumultuous city, a 
joyous fortress ? Thy slain men are not slain with the sword, 

3 nor dead in battle. All thy princes are fled together, they are 
bound by the archers : all that are found in thee are bound 

4 together, which have fled afar. Therefore say I, Look away 
from me : I will weep bitterly, labour not to comfort me, 

5 because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people. For it 
is a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity, 
from the Lord God of hosts in the valley of vision : of breaking 

6 down the walls, and of crying to the mountains. And Elam 
bears the quiver, with chariots, infantry, and horsemen : and Kir 

7 uncovereth the shield. And it hath come to pass, that thy 
choicest valleys are full of chariots : and the horsemen have set 

s themselves in array at the gate. And the veil of Judah is torn 
away : and thou hast looked in this day to the armour of the 

9 house of the forest. Ye have seen also to the breaches of the 
city of David, that they are many : and ye have gathered 

10 together the waters of the lower pool. And ye have numbered 
the houses of Jerusalem : and the houses have ye broken down 

n to fortify the wall. Ye have made also a reservoir between the 
Two Walls, for the water of the old pool : but ye have not 
looked unto Him who hath done this, neither had respect unto 

12 Him who purposed it long ago. And in this day doth the 
Lord God of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to 

13 baldness, and to girding with sackcloth ; and behold mirth and 
jollity, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking 

14 wine : Let us eat and drink ; for to-morrow we shall die. And 
the Lord of hosts hath revealed himself in mine ears, Surely 
this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die. saith the 
Lord God of hosts. 

15 Thus saith the Lord God of hosts : Go, get thee unto this 
ig treasurer, unto Shebna, which is over the house, and say, What 

hast thou here ? and whom hast thou here ? that thou hast 
hewed thee out a sepulchre here, — hewing him out a sepulchre 
j? on high ! graving an habitation for himself in a rock ! Behold 
is Jehovah will surely cast thee down, 0 man : and hold thee fast. 
He will roll thee together like a ball, and violently toss thee 
into a large country : there shalt thou die, and there shall go 



422 



ISAIAH XXII, XXIII 



the chariots of thy glory, thou shame of thy lord's house. 

19 And I will drive thee from thy station : and from thy state He 

20 shall pull thee down. And it shall come to pass in that daj r , 

21 that I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah : and I 
will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy 
girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand : and 
he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the 

22 house of Judah. And the key of the house of David will I lay 
upon his shoulder : and he shall open, and none shall shut ; 

23 and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him 
as a nail in a sure place : and he shall be for a glorious throne 

24 to his father's house. And they shall hang upon him all the 
glory of his father's house, the offspring and the issue, every 

25 small vessel, from cups to flagons of every kind. In that day, 
saith the Lord of hosts, shall the nail fastened in the sure place 
be removed : and it shall be cut down, and fall, and the burden 
that was upon it shall be cut off ; for Jehovah hath spoken it. 



XXIII. 

XXIII. i The burden of Tyre. 

Howl, ye ships of Tarshish ; for it is laid waste ! so that 
there is no house, no entering in : from the land of Chittim it 

2 is made known to them. Be silent, ye inhabitants of the Isle ; 
thou whom the merchants of Sidon, that pass over the sea, 

3 have replenished : and whose revenue is by great waters, the 
seed of the Nile, the harvest of the river ; and she is a mart of 

4 nations. Be thou ashamed, 0 Sidon : for the sea hath spoken, 
even the Stronghold of the sea, saying, I travail not, nor bring 
forth children, neither do I nourish up young men, nor bring up 

5 virgins. As at the report concerning Egypt, so shall they be 

6 sorely pained at the report of Tyre. Pass ye over to Tarshish : 

7 howl, ye inhabitants of the Isle. Is this your joyous city, 
whose antiquity is of ancient days ? Her own feet shall carry 

8 her afar off to sojourn. Who hath taken this counsel against 
Tyre, the dispenser of crowns : whose merchants are princes, 

9 whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth ? The Lord 
of hosts hath purposed it : to stain the pride of all glory, and to 
bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth. 

10 Pass through thy land like the Nile, 0 daughter of Tarshish : 
n thy bounds are no more. He hath stretched out his hand over 

the sea, he hath shaken the kingdoms : Jehovah hath given a 
commandment against Canaan, to destroy the strongholds 



ISAIAH XXIII. , XXIV. 



12 thereof. And he said, Thou shalt no more rejoice, 0 thou 
dishonoured virgin, daughter of Sidon : arise, pass over to 

13 Chittim ; there also shalt thou have no rest. Behold the land 
of the Chaldeans ; this people was not, till the Assyrian founded 
it for them that dwell in the wilderness : they have set up their 
siege towers, they have wasted the palaces thereof ; he hath 

14 made her a heap of ruins. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish : for your 
stronghold is laid waste. 

15 And it shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be 
forgotten seventy years, like the days of one king : after the 

16 end of seventy years shall Tyre sing as an harlot. Take an 
harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten : 
make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be re- 

17 membered. And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy 
years, that Jehovah will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her 
hire : and shall play the harlot with all the kingdoms of the 

is world upon the face of the earth. And her merchandise and 
her hire shall be holiness to Jehovah ; it shall not be treasured 
nor laid up : for her merchandise shall be for them that dwell 
before Jehovah, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing. 



XXIV., XXV., XXVI., XXVII. 

XXIV. i Behold Jehovah poureth the earth out, and maketh it 
empty : and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the 

2 inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so 
with the priest ; as with the servant, so with his master ; as with 
the maid, so with her mistress : as with the buyer, so with the 
seller ; as with the lender, so with the borrower ; as with the 

3 creditor, so with the debtor. The land shall be emptied, emptied 
out ; and spoiled, spoiled utterly : for Jehovah hath spoken this 

4 word. The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world 
languisheth and fadeth away : the haughty people of the earth 

5 do languish. The land also is denied under the inhabitants 
thereof : because they have transgressed the laws, changed the 

6 ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the 
curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are 
desolate : therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and 

7 few men left. The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth : 

8 all the merry-hearted do sigh. The mirth of tabrets ceaseth, 
the noise of them that rejoice endeth : the joy of the harp 

9 ceaseth. They shall not drink wine with a song : strong drink 

10 shall be bitter to them that drink it. The city of confusion is 



424 



ISAIAH XXIV., XXV. 



broken down : every house is shut up, that no man may come 

11 in. There is a crying for wine in the streets : all joy is 

12 darkened, the mirth of the land is gone. In the city is left 

13 desolation : and the gate is smitten with ruin. For so it shall 
be in the midst of the land, among the peoples : as the shaking 
of an olive tree, as the gleaning grapes when the vintage is 

14 done. They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the 

15 majesty of Jehovah : they shall cry aloud from the sea. Where- 
fore glorify ye Jehovah in the land of the sunrise : the name of 
Jehovah God of Israel in the isles of the sea, 

16 From the ends of the earth have we heard songs, even glory 
to the Kighteous : but I said, My leanness, my leanness, woe 
unto me ! the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacher- 
ously ; yea the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously. 

17 Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, 0 inhabitant 

18 of the earth. And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth 
from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit ; and he that 
cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the 
snare : for the windows from on high are open, and the 

19 foundations of the earth do shake. The earth is broken, 
broken up : the earth is shattered, all shattered ; the earth 

so doth quake, doth quake exceedingly. The earth doth reel, doth 
reel like a drunken man, and swayeth to and fro like a ham- 
mock : and her transgression is heavy upon her ; and she shall 

2i fall, and not rise again. And it shall come to pass in that day, 
that Jehovah shall come to judge the host of the high ones that 

12 are on high : and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they 
shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the 
dungeon, and shall be shut up in the prison : and after many 

23 days shall they be visited. And the moon shall be con- 
founded, and the sun ashamed : when the Loed of hosts shall 
reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients 
gloriously. 

XXY. l 0 Jehovah, thou art my God ; I will exalt thee, I will 
praise thy name ; for thou hast done wonderful things : thy coun- 

2 sels of old are faithfulness and truth. For thou hast made of a 
city an heap ; of a defenced city a ruin : a palace of strangers 

s to be no city ; it shall never be built again. Therefore shall the 
strong people glorify thee : the city of the terrible nations shall 

4 fear thee. For thou hast been a stronghold to the poor, a 
stronghold to the needy in his distress : a refuge from the 
storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible 

5 ones is as a storm against the wall. Thou shalt bring down 



ISAIAH XXV., XXVI 



425 



the noise of strangers, as the heat in a dry place : as the heat 
with the shadow of a cloud, the song of the terrible ones shall 
be brought low. 

6 And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all 
peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees : of 
fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. 

7 And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering 
cast over all peoples : and the veil that is spread over all nations. 

s He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord Jehovah 
will wipe away tears from off all faces : and the rebuke of his 
people shall he take away from off all the earth ; for Jehovah 
hath spoken it. 

i) And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God ; we 
have waited for him, and he will save us : this is Jehovah ; we 
have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salva- 

10 tion. For on this mountain shall the hand of Jehovah rest : 
and Moab shall be trodden down under him, as straw is trodden 

11 down in the water of the dunghill. And he shall spread forth 
his hands in the midst of it, as he that swimmeth spreadeth 
forth his hands to swim : and He shall bring down their 

12 pride, together with the skill of their hands. And the fortress 
of the high fort of thy walls shall he bring down, lay low, 
and bring to the ground, even to the dust. 

XXVI. 1 In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah : 
We have a strong city ; salvation doth God appoint for walls 

2 and bulwarks. Open ye the gates : that the righteous nation 

3 which keepeth the truth may enter in. Thou wilt keep him in 
peace, in peace, whose miud is stayed on thee : because he 

4 trusteth in thee. Trust ye in Jehovah for ever : for in the Lord 

5 Jehovah is everlasting strength. For he bringeth down them 
that dwell on high ; the lofty city, he layeth it low : he layeth 
it low, even to the ground ; he bringeth it even to the dust. 

6 The foot shall tread it down : the feet of the poor, the steps of 

7 the needy. The way of the just is even : thou makest even 

8 the path of the just. Yea, in the way of thy judgments, 0 
Jehovah, have we waited for thee : the desire of our soul is to 

9 thy name, and to the remembrance of thee. With my soul 
have I desired thee in the night ; yea, with my spirit within 
me do I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the 

10 earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. Let 
favour be showed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteous- 
ness : in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will 
not behold the majesty of Jehovah. 



426 



ISAIAH XXVI, XXVII 



11 Jehovah, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see : but 
they shall see, and be ashamed at thy zeal for thy people ; yea, 
the fire shall devour thine enemies. 

12 Jehovah, thou wilt ordain peace for us : for thou also hast 
wrought all our works for us. 

13 0 Jehovah our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion 
over us : but by thee only will we make mention of thy name. 

14 They are dead, they shall not live ; they are shades, they shall 
not rise : therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and 

15 made all their memory to perish. Thou hast increased the 
nation, 0 Jehovah, thou hast increased the nation ; thou hast 
glorified thyself: thou hast enlarged all the borders of the land. 

16 Jehovah, in trouble have they visited thee : they poured out a 

17 whispered prayer, when thy chastening was upon them. As a 
woman with child, when she drawefch near the time of her 
delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs : so have we 

is been in thy sight, 0 Jehovah. We have been with child, we 
have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind : we 
have not wrought any deliverance in the earth ; neither are the 

19 inhabitants of the world brought forth. Tby dead shall live, 
my dead bodies shall arise : awake and sing, ye that dwell in 
dust ; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall 
bring forth the dead. 

20 Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut 
thy doors about thee : hide thyself as it were for a little 

21 moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, 
Jehovah cometh out of his place, to punish the inhabitants of 
the earth for their iniquity : and the earth shall disclose her 
blood, and shall no more cover her slain. 

XXVII. 1 In that day Jehovah with his sore and great and strong 
sword shall punish leviathan the fleet serpent, and leviathan 
the coiled serpent: and he shall slay the dragon that is in 
the sea. 

2 In that day sing ye unto her ; A vineyard of wine ; — 

3 I Jehovah do keep it ; I will water it every moment : lest any 

4 hurt it, I will keep it night and day. Fury is not in me : who 
would set the briars and thorns against me in battle ? I would 

5 go through them, I would burn them together. Or let him 
take hold of my strength, let him make peace with me : let him 

6 make peace with me. In the coming time Jacob shall take 
root : Israel shall bud and blossom, and fill the face of the 
world with fruit. 

7 Hath He smitten him, as He smote those that smote him ? 



ISAIAH XXVII, XXVIII 



427 



8 Is lie slain with the slaughter of their slain ? In measure, by 
sending her away, thou dost contend with her : He driveth her 

9 away by his rough wind in the day of the east wind. By this 
therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged ; and this is all 
its fruit : — to take away his sin, to break all the stones of the 
altar in pieces like chalkstones, and to raise up the images of 

10 Astarte, and of the Sun, no more. For the defenced city shall 
be desolate, the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness : 
there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and con- 

11 sume the branches thereof. When the boughs thereof are 
withered, they shall be broken off; the women come, and set 
them on fire : for it is a people of no understanding ; therefore 
he that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that 
formed them will show them no favour. 

12 And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah shall 
gather in his fruit from the channel of the Kiver unto the stream 
of Egypt : and ye shall be gathered one by one, 0 ye children 

13 of Israel. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great 
trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready 
to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land 
of Egypt : and they shall worship Jehovah in the holy mount 
at Jerusalem. 



XXVIII. , XXIX., XXX., XXXIV., XXXV. 

XXVIII. 1 Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of 
Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty : which 
are on the head of the fat valley of them that are overcome with 

2 wine ! Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which 
as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty 
waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand. 

3 The crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be 

4 trodden under feet : and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, 
which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the early 
fruit before the summer ; which when he that looketh upon it 
seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up. 

5 In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, 
and for a diadem of beauty ; unto the residue of his people : 

6 and for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment ; 
and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate. 

7 But they also have erred through wine, and through strong- 
drink are out of the way : the priest and the prophet have 
erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, 



428 



ISAIAH XXVIII. 



they are out of the way through strong drink ; they err in 
s vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of 

vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean. 
d i Whom will he teach knowledge ? and whom will he make 
to understand doctrine ? Them that are weaned from the milk, 

10 and taken from the breasts ? It is precept upon precept, pre- 
cept upon precept ; line upon line, line upon line : here a little, 

n and there a little.' Yea, with stammering lips and another 

12 tongue will He speak to this people, who said to them, This is the 
rest ; cause the weary to rest ; and this is the refreshing : but 

is they would not hear. And the word of Jehovah is unto them 
precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, 
line upon line : here a little, there a little ; that they might 
go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. 

14 Wherefore hear the word of Jehovah, ye scornful men, that 

io rule this people which is in Jerusalem. Because ye have said, 
We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at 
agreement ; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, 
it shall not come unto us : for we have made lies our refuge, 
and under falsehood have we hid ourselves : — 

16 Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I have laid 
in Zion a foundation stone, a tried stone, a precious corner 
stone, a sure foundation : he that believeth shall not make 

it haste. And I will set judgment for the line, and righteousness 
for the plummet : and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of 

is lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your 
covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement 
with hell shall not stand : when the overflowing scourge shall 

19 pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. And as 
often as it passeth through, it shall take you ; for morning by 
morning shall it pass through, by day and by night : and 

20 affliction alone will make you understand doctrine. For the 
bed is too short for a man to stretch himself on it : and the 

21 covering too narrow for a man to wrap himself in it. For Je- 
hovah shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as 
in the valley of Gibeon : that he may do his work, his strange 

22 work ; and bring to pass his act, his strange act. Now there- 
fore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong : for I 
have heard from the Lord God of hosts a consumption, even 
determined upon the whole land. 

23 Give ye ear, and hear my voice : hearken, and hear my 

24 speech. Doth the ploughman plough all day in order to sow ? 
2b Doth he open and break the clods of his ground ? When he hath 



ISAIAH XXXVIII, XXIX. 



made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast ahroad the dill, 
and scatter the cummin, and sow the wheat in rows, and the 
•26 barley in the appointed place, and the rye in his border ? For 
his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. 

27 For the dill is not threshed with the corn-sledge, neither is the 
cart wheel turned about upon the cummin ; but the dill is 

28 beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. Is bread 
corn crushed to pieces ; for he doth not thresh it for ever ? He 
drives his cart wheel and his horses ; he doth not crush it to 

29. pieces. This also cometh forth from the Loed of hosts, who is 

wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working. 
XXIX. i Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt ! Add 

2 ye year to year ; let the festivals go round. Yet I will distress 
Ariel, and there shall be heaviness and sorrow: and it shall be 

3 unto me as Ariel. And I will camp against thee round about : 
and I will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise 

4 forts against thee. And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt 
speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the 
dust: and thy voice shall be like that of a spirit out of the 

5 ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust. Yet the 
multitude of thy foreign invaders shall become like small dust, 
and the multitude of the terrible ones as chaff that passeth away : 

6 yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly. Thou shalt be visited of 
the Lokd of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great 
noise : with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire. 

7 And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, 
shall be as a dream of a night vision : even all that fight 

8 against her and her bulwarks, and that distress her. It shall 
even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he 
eateth ; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty : or as when a 
thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh ; but he 
awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite : 
so shall the multitude of all the nations be, that fight against 
mount Zion. 

9 Waver, and wonder ; blind yourselves, and be blind : they 
are drunken, but not with wine ; they stagger, but not with 

10 strong drink. For Jehovah hath poured out upon you the 
spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes : the prophets 

n and your rulers, the seers hath he covered. And the vision of 
all is become unto you as the words of a sealed book, which 
men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Bead this, I pray 

12 thee : and he saith, I cannot ; for it is sealed. And the book is 
delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Eead this, I pray 



43° 



ISAIAH XXIX., XXX. 



13 thee : and he saith, I am not learned. Wherefore the Lord 
hath said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their 
mouth, and with their lips do honour me ; but have removed 
their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by 

14 the precept of men : therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a 
marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work 
and a wonder ; for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, 
and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid. 

15 Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from 
Jehovah : and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who 

16 seeth us ? and who knoweth us ? Surely your turning of 
things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay : for 
shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not ? Or 
shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no 

17 understanding ? Is it not yet a very little while, and Lebanon 
shall be turned into a fruitful field : and the fruitful field shall 

is be reckoned to the forest ? And in that day shall the deaf 
hear the words of the book : and the eyes of the blind shall see 

19 out of obscurity, and out of darkness. The meek also shall 
increase their joy in Jehovah : and the poor among men shall 

20 rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. For the terrible one is 
brought to nought, and the scorner ceaseth ; and all that watch 

21 for iniquity are cut off: that make a man an offender for a 
word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate ; and 
turn aside the just for a thing of nought. 

22 Therefore thus saith Jehovah, who redeemed Abraham, con- 
cerning the house of Jacob : — Jacob shall no more be ashamed, 

23 neither shall his face any more wax pale. But when he seeth 
his children, the work of mine hands, in the midst of him, they 
shall sanctify my name : and shall sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, 

24 and shall fear the God of Israel. They also that erred in spirit 
shall come to understanding: and they that murmured shall 
learn doctrine. 

XXX. i Woe to the rebellious children, saith Jehovah, that take 
counsel, but not of me ; and that weave a web, but not of my 

2 spirit ; that they may add sin to sin : that walk to go down into 
Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth ; to strengthen them- 
selves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of 

3 Egypt ! Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, 

4 and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion. When his 
o princes are at Zoan, and his ambassadors come to Hanes ; they 

shall all be ashamed of a people that can not profit them, nor 
be an help nor profit, but a shame, and also a reproach. 



ISAIAH XXX. 



43 1 



6 The burden of the beasts of the south ! Through a land of 
trouble and anguish, from whence come the lioness and the 
fierce lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent : they carry their 
riches upon the shoulders of young asses, and their treasures 
upon the bunches of camels, to a people that shall not profit 

7 them. For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose : 

8 therefore have I called her the blusterer that sitteth still. Now 
go, write it before them on a table, and note it in a book : that 

9 it may be for the time to come for ever and ever. For this is a 
rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the 

10 law of Jehovah : which say to the seers, See not ; and to the 
prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things : speak unto us 

11 smooth things, prophesy deceits : get you out of the way, turn 
aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from 

12 before us. Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, 
because ye despise this word, and trust in oppression and per- 

13 verseness, and stay thereon : therefore this iniquity shall be to 
you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose 

14 breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. And it shall be broken 
as when an earthen pitcher is broken in pieces, — broken un- 
sparingly : so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it 
a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal 
out of the well. 

15 For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel ; 
In returning and rest shall ye be saved ; in quietness and in 

16 confidence shall be your strength : and ye would not. But ye 
said, No ; for we will flee upon horses ; therefore shall ye flee : 
and, We will ride upon the swift ; therefore shall they that 

17 pursue you be swift. One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of 
one ; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee : till ye be left as a 
beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on an hill. 

is And therefore will Jehovah wait, that he may be gracious unto 
you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy 
upon you : for Jehovah is a God of righteousness : blessed are 
all they that wait for him. 

19 For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem : thou shalt 
weep no more ; he will be very gracious unto thee at the voice 

20 of thy cry ; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee. And 
though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water 
of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner 

21 any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers : and thine ears 
shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk 
ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to 



43 2 



ISAIAH XXX., XXXI. 



22 the left. Ye shall defile also the covering of thy graven images 
of silver, and the ornament of thy molten images of gold : thou 
shalt cast them away as a loathsome thing ; thou shalt say 

23 unto it, Get thee hence. Then shall he give rain for thy seed, 
that thou shalt sow the ground withal ; and bread of the 
increase of the earth, and it shall be fat and plenteous : in that 

24 day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures. And the oxen and 
the young asses that ear the ground shall eat well-seasoned pro- 
vender, which hath been winnowed with the shovel and with 

25 the fan. ,And there shall be upon every lofty mountain, and 
upon every high hill, rivers, and streams of waters : in the day 

26 of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. And the light of 
the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the 
sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days : in the day 
that Jehovah bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth 
the stroke of their wound. 

27 Behold, the name of Jehovah cometh from far, burning with 
his anger, and the burden thereof is heavy : his lips are full of 

28 indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire. And his breath 
as an overflowing stream, shall reach to the midst of the neck, 
to sift the nations with the sieve of perdition : and there shall 
be a bridle in the jaws of the peoples, to lead them astray. 

29 Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is 
kept : and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe 
to come into the mountain of Jehovah, to the Rock of Israel. 

ao And Jehovah shall cause the majesty of his voice to be heard, 
and shall show the lighting down of his arm, with the indig- 
nation of anger and the flame of a devouring fire : with scatter- 

31 ing, and tempest, and hailstones. For through the voice of 
Jehovah shall the Assyrian be beaten down : he shall smite 

32 him with a rod. And every stroke of the staff of doom, which 
Jehovah shall lay upon him, shall be with tabrets and harps : 

33 and with blows of Dattle will he fight against him. For Tophet 
is ordained of old ; yea, for the king it is prepared ; he hath 
made it deep and large : the pile thereof is fire and much 
wood ; the breath of Jehovah, like a stream of brimstone, doth 
kindle it. 

XXXI. i Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help ; and stay 
on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many ; and in 
horsemen, because they are very strong : but they look not unto 
2 the Holy One of Israel, neither seek Jehovah ! Yet he also is 
wise, and will bring evil, and will not call back his words : and he 
will rise up against the house of the evildoers, and against the 



ISAIAH XXXI, XXXII 



433 



3 help of them that work iniquity. And the Egyptians are men, 
and not God ; and their horses flesh, and not spirit : and 
Jehovah shall stretch out his hand, and he that helpeth shall 
fall, and he that is holpen shall fall down, and they all shall 
perish together. 

4 For thus hath Jehovah spoken unto me, Like as the lion and 
the young lion growling over his prey, when a multitude of 
shepherds is called forth against him, he is not afraid of their 
voice, nor abaseth himself for the noise of them : so shall the 
Lord of hosts come down to fight for mount Zion, and for 

5 the hill thereof. As birds hovering over their young, so 
will the Loed of hosts defend Jerusalem : — defend and deliver, 

6 pass over and save. Return ye unto Him from whom ye 

7 have deeply revolted, 0 children of Israel. For in that day 
every man shall cast away his idols of silver, and his idols of 
gold, which your own hands have made unto you for a sin. 

8 Then shall the Assyrian fall by the sword, not of a man ; and 
the sword, not of a mortal, shall devour him : and he shall flee 
from the sword, and his young warriors shall be bondsmen. 

9 And he shall pass over to his strong hold for fear, and his 
princes shall be afraid of the ensigns, saith Jehovah, whose fire 
is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem. 

XXXII. i Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness : and princes 

2 shall rule in judgment. And a man shall be as an hiding place 
from the wind, and a covert from the storm : as rivers of water 
in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 

3 And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim : and the ears of 

4 them that hear shall hearken. And the heart of the reckless 
shall understand knowledge : and the tongue of the stammerers 

5 shall be ready to speak plainly. The vile person shall be no 

6 more called noble, nor the churl said to be gentle. For the vile 
person will speak villany, and his heart will work iniquity : to 
practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against Jehovah, to make 
empty the soul of the hungry, and to cause the drink of the 

7 thirsty to fail. The instruments also of the churl are evil : he 
deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, 

s even when the needy claimeth his right. But the noble deviseth 

noble things : and by noble things doth he stand. 
9 Rise up, ye women that are at ease ; hear my voice : ye care- 

10 less daughters, give ear unto my speech. In a year and day 
shall ye be troubled, ye careless women : for the vintage faileth, 

11 the gathering shall not come. Tremble, ye women that are at 
ease ; be troubled, ye careless ones : strip you, and make you 

F F 



434 



ISAIAH XXXII, XXXIII 



12 bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins. They shall beat on 

13 the breasts, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. Upon the 
land of my people shall come up thorns and briers : yea, upon all 

14 the houses of joy in the joyous city. For the palace shall be 
forsaken ; the crowd of the city shall be left : Ophel, and the 
watch-tower shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pas- 

15 ture of flocks : until the spirit be poured upon us from on high, 
and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field 

16 be counted for a forest. Then judgment shall dwell in the wil- 

17 derness : and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. And the 
work of righteousness shall be peace : and the effect of righteous- 

is ness quietness and assurance for ever. And my people shall dwell 
in a home of peace : and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting 

19 places. And it shall hail, to the downfall of the forest : and the 

20 city shall be low in a low place. Blessed are ye that sow beside 
all waters : that send forth the feet of the ox and the ass. 

XXXIII. i Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled ; 
and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with 
thee ! When thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled ; 
when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they 
shall deal treacherously with thee. 
2 0 Jehovah, be gracious unto us ; we wait for thee : be thou 
their arm every morning, our salvation also in the time of 
?, trouble. At the noise of the tumult the peoples flee : at the 

4 lifting up of thyself the nations are scattered. And your spoil 
shall be gathered like the gathering of the caterpillar : as the 

5 running to and fro of locusts shall they run upon it. Jehovah 
is exalted ; for he dwelleth on high : he hath filled Zion with 

6 judgment and righteousness. And wisdom and knowledge shall 
be the stability of thy times, and thy strength of salvation : 
the fear of Jehovah is his treasure. 

7 Behold, their valiant ones cry without : the ambassadors of 

8 peace weep bitterly. The highways lie waste, the wayfaring 
man ceaseth : he hath broken the covenant, he hath despised the 

9 cities, he regardeth no man. The land mourneth and lan- 
guished : Lebanon is ashamed and withereth away : Sharon is 
like a wilderness ; and Bashan and Carmel cast their leaves. 

10 Now will I rise, saith Jehovah : now will I be exalted ; now 
n will I lift up myself. Ye shall conceive chaff, ye shall bring 

12 forth stubble : your breath, as fire, shall devour you. And the 
people shall be as the burnings of lime : as thorns cut up shall 
they be burned in the fire. 

13 Hear, ye that are far off 1 , what I have done: and, ye that are 



ISAIAH XXXIII, XXXIV. 



435 



14 near, acknowledge my might. The sinners in Zion are afraid ; 
fearfnlness had surprised the hypocrites : who among us can 
abide the devouring fire ? who among us can abide perpetual 

15 burnings ? He that walketh righteously, and speaketh up- 
rightly : he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh 
his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from 

16 hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil. He 
shall dwell in high places : his place of defence shall be the 
strongholds of rocks : bread shall be given him ; his waters shall 

17 be sure. Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty : they 
is shall behold the land afar off. Thine heart shall meditate on 

the past terror. Where is he that counted ? where is he that 
weighed ? where is the receiver ? where is he that counted the 

19 towers ? Thou shalt see no more a fierce people, a people of 
deep speech that thou canst not hear; of a barbarous tongue 

20 that thou canst not understand. Look upon Zion, the city of 
our solemnities : thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet home, a 
tent that shall not be taken down ; not one of the stakes thereof 
shall ever be pulled up, neither shall any of the cords thereof be 

21 broken. But there the glorious Jehovah will be unto us a 
place of broad rivers and streams : wherein shall go no galley 

22 with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. For Jehovah 
is our judge, Jehovah is our lawgiver, Jehovah is our king : he 

23 will save us. Thy tacklings are loosed : they cannot hold the 
mast upright, they cannot spread the ensign : then is the prey of 

24 a great spoil divided : the lame take the prey. And the in- 
habitant shall not say, I am sick : the people that dwell therein 
shall be forgiven their iniquity. 

XXXIV. i Come near, ye nations, to hear ; and hearken, ye 
peoples : let the earth hear, and all that is therein ; the world, and 

2 all things that come forth of it. For the indignation of Jehovah 
is upon all nations, and his wrath upon all their armies : he hath 
utterly doomed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter. 

3 And their slain shall be cast out, and the stench of their carcases 
shall go up : and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. 

4 And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens 
shall be rolled together as a scroll : and all their host shall fall 
down, as the withered leaf falleth off from the vine, and as 

5 the blighted fruit from the fig tree. For my sword is drenched 
in heaven : behold, it shall come down upon Edom, and upon 

6 the people of my curse, for judgment. The sword of Jehovah 
is glutted with blood, it is gorged with fat, with the blood of 
lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams : for 

f f 2 



43& 



ISAIAH XXXIV., XXXV. 



Jehovah hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the 
7 land of Edom. And the buffaloes shall fall down with them, 

and the bullocks with the bulls : and their land shall be drenched 
s with blood, and their dust made rich with fat. For it is the day 

of J ehovah's vengeance : and the year of recompences for the con- 

9 troversy of Zion. And the streams thereof shall be turned into 
pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone : and the land thereof 

10 shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor 
day ; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever : from generation 
to generation it shall lie waste ; none shall pass through it for 

n ever and ever. And it shall be an heritage for the pelican and 
the hedgehog ; the bittern also and the raven shall dwell in it: 
and He shall stretch out upon it the line of desolation, and the 

12 plummet of emptiness. They shall call the nobles thereof to 
the kingdom, but none shall be there : and all her princes shall 

13 be nothing. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles 
and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and she shall be an 
habitation of wild dogs, and a court for the daughters of the 

14 ostrich. And the jackals shall meet with the wolves, and the 
satyr shall cry to his fellow : the night-spectre also shall dwell 

15 there, and find for herself a place of rest. There shall the great 
owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her 
shadow : there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one 

16 with her mate. Seek ye out of the book of Jehovah, and read : 
no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate : for my 
mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered 

it them. And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath 
divided it unto them by line : they shall possess it as an herit- 
age for ever. From generation to generation shall they dwell 
therein. 

XXXV. i The wilderness and the parched land shall be glad for 

2 them : and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It 
shall blossom, it shall blossom and rejoice, yea, with joy and 
singing ; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excel- 
lency of Carmel and Sharon : they shall see the glory of Jehovah, 
the excellency of our God. 

3 Strengthen ye the weak hands : and confirm the feeble knees. 

4 Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not : 
behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a 

5 recompence ; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the 
blind shall be opened : and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. 

6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the 
dumb shall shout : for in the wilderness shall waters break out, 



ISAIAH XXXV., XXXVI 



437 



7 and streams in the desert. And the mirage shall become a pool, 
and the thirsty^ land springs of water : in the habitation of 
jaekals, where each lay, shail be a place for reeds and rushes. 

8 And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be 
called the holy way ; the unclean shall not pass over it ; but it 
shall be for those : the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not 

9 err therein. No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous 
beast go up thereon ; none shall be found there : but the 

10 redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of Jehovah 
shall return, and come to Zion with shouts, and everlasting 
joy upon their heads : they shall obtain joy and gladness, 
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. 



XXXVI. 

XXXYI. i Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king 
Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all 

2 the defenced cities of Judah, and took them. And the king of 
Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, unto king 
Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of 

3 the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller's field. Then came 
forth unto him Eliakim, Hilkiah's son, which was over the 
house, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah, Asaph's son, the 
recorder. 

4 And Babshakeh said unto them, Say ye now to Hezekiah, Thus 
saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this 

5 wherein thou trustest ? I say, vain words are thy counsel and 
strength for war : now on whom dost thou trust, that thou re- 

6 bellest against me ? Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken 
reed, on Egypt : whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, 
and pierce it : so is Pharaoh king of Egypt, to all that trust in 

7 him. But if thou say to me, We trust in Jehovah our God : is it 
not he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken 

6 away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship 
before this altar ? Now therefore, I pray thee, engage with my 
master the king of Assyria, and I will give thee two thousand 
horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them. 

9 How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the 
least of my master's servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for 
10 chariots and for horsemen ? And am I now come up without 
Jehovah against this land to destroy it ? Jehovah said unto 
me, Go up against this land, and destroy it. 



438 



ISAIAH XXXVI, XXXVII. 



11,. Then said Eliakim and Shebna and Joah unto Rabshakeh, 
Speak, I pray thee, unto thy servants in Syrian ; for we under- 
stand it : and speak not to us in Jewish, in the ears of the 

12 people that are on the wall. But Rabshakeh said, Hath my 
master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? 
hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, only to 
die with you by famine and by thirst ? 

18 Then Rabshakeh stood, and cried with a loud voice in 
Jewish, and said, Hear ye the words of the great king, the 

u king of Assyria. Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive 

1 5 you : for he shall not be able to deliver you. Neither let Hezekiah 
make you trust in Jehovah, saying, Jehovah will surely deliver 
us : this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of 

16 Assyria. Hearken not to Hezekiah ; for thus saith the king of 
Assyria, Make peace with me, and come out to me : and eat ye 
every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye 

n every one the waters of his own cistern ; until I come and take 
you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, 

is a land of bread and vineyards. Beware lest Hezekiah persuade 
you, saying, Jehovah will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of 
the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of 

19 Assyria ? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad ? where 
are the gods of Sepharvaim ? and have they delivered Samaria 

20 out of my hand ? Who are they among all the gods of these 
lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand, that 
Jehovah should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand ? 

21 But they held their peace, and answered him not a word : for 
the king's commandment was, saying, Answer him not. 

22 Then came Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, that was over the 
household, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah, the son of 
Asaph, the recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and 
told him the words of Rabshakeh. 

XXXVII. i And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, 
that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and 

2 went into the house of Jehovah. And he sent Eliakim, who was 
over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and the elders of 
the priests covered with sackcloth, unto Isaiah the prophet the 

3 son of Amoz. And they said unto him, Thus saith Hezekiah, This 
day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy : for 
the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to 

4 bring forth. It may be Jehovah thy God will hear the words of 
Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master hath sent to 
reproach the living God, and will reprove the words which 



ISAIAH XXXVII 



439 



Jehovah thy God hath heard : wherefore lift up thy prayer 
for the remnant that is left. 

5 So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah. And Isaiah 

6 said unto them, Thus shall ye say unto your master, Thus saith 
Jehovah, Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, 
wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed 

7 me. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a 
rumour, and return to his own land ; and I will cause him to 
fall by the sword in his own land. 

8 So Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria 
warring against Libnah : for he had heard that he was departed 

9 from Lachish. And he heard say concerning Tirhakah king of 
Ethiopia, He is come forth to make war with thee. And when 

10 he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, Thus shall 
ye speak to Hezekiah, king of Judah, saying, Let not thy God, 
in whom thou trustest, deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not 

n be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Behold, thou hast 
heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by destroy- 

12 ing them utterly ; and shalt thou be delivered ? Have the gods 
of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed, 
as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of Eden 
v i3 which were in Telassar ? Where is the king of Hamath, and the 
king of Arphad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, 
and Ivah ? 

14 And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the mes- 
sengers, and read it : and Hezekiah went up unto the house of 

15 Jehovah, and spread it before Jehovah. And Hezekiah prayed 

16 unto Jehovah, saying, 0 Lokd of hosts, God of Israel, that 
dwellest between the cherubim, thou art the God, even thou 
alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth : thou hast made heaven 

it and earth. Incline thine ear, 0 Jehovah, and hear ; open thine 
eyes, 0 Jehovah, and see : and hear all the words of Sen- 
is nacherib, which hath sent to reproach the living God. Of a 
truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the 
nations, and their countries, and have cast their gods into 

19 the fire : for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, 

20 wood and stone : therefore they have destroyed them. Now 
therefore, 0 Jehovah our God, save us from his hand, that all 
the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord, 
even thou only. 

21 And Isaiah the son of Amoz sent unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus 
saith Jehovah God of Israel, Whereas thou hast prayed to me 

2> against Sennacherib king of Assyria i this is the word which 



440 



ISAIAH XXXVII 



Jehovah hath spoken concerning him : The virgin, the daughter 
of Zion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn ; the 

23 daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. Whom 
hast thou reproached and blasphemed ? And against whom 
hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high ? 

24 even against the Holy One of Israel. By thy servants hast 
thou reproached the Lord, and hast said, By the multitude of 
my chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains, to 
the sides of Lebanon : and I will cut down the tall cedars 
thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof : and I will enter into 

25 his farthest height, and into his garden-forest. I have digged, 
and drunk water ; and with the sole of my feet will I dry up all 
the rivers of Egypt. 

26 Hast thou not heard that long ago I have done it ; that 
from the days of old I have prepared it ? Now have I brought 
it to pass, that thou shouldest lay waste defenced cities into 

27 ruinous heaps. Therefore their inhabitants were of small 
power, they were dismayed and confounded : they were as the 
grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the 

28 housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up. But I 
know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and 

29 thy rage against me. Because thy rage against me, and thy 
tumult, is come up into mine ears, therefore will I put my 
hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn 
thee back by the way by which thou earnest. 

30 And this shall be a sign unto thee ; ye shall eat this year 
what groweth of itself; and the second year that which 
springeth of the same : and in the third year sow ye, and reap, 

31 and plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof. And the rem- 
nant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root 

32 downward, and bear fruit upward : for out of Jerusalem shall 
go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of mount Zion : 
the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this. 

33 Thereforth thus saith Jehovah concerning the king of Assyria, 
He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor 

34 come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it. By the 
way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not 

35 come into this city, saith Jehovah. For I will defend this city 
to save it : for my own sake and for my servant David's sake. 

36 And the angel of Jehovah went forth, and smote in the camp 

37 of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand : and 
when they arose early in the morning, behold they were all dead 
corpses, So Sennacherib king of Assyria decamped, and departed, 



ISAIAH XXXVIII 



441 



and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. And it came to pass, as he 
was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adram- 
melech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword ; and 
they escaped into the land of Armenia ; and Esar-haddon his 
son reigned in his stead. 



XXXVIII. 

XXVIII. 1 • In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. 
And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came unto him, and 
said unto him, Thus saith Jehovah, Set thine house in order : 
for thou shalt die, and not live. Then Hezekiah turned 
his face toward the wall, and prayed unto Jehovah, and said, 
Remember now, Jehovah, I beseech thee, how I have walked 
before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done 
that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. 

Then came the word of Jehovah to Isaiah, saying, Go, and say 
to Hezekiah, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of David thy father, 
I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears : behold, I will 
add unto thy days fifteen years. And I will deliver thee and 
this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria : and I will de- 
fend this city. And this is a sign unto thee from Jehovah, 
that Jehovah will perform this word that he hath spoken ; 
Behold, I am causing the shadow to go back the degrees which 
it has gone down on the sun-dial of Ahaz, ten degrees back- 
ward. And the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it 
had gone down. 

The writing of Hezekiah King of Judah, when he had 
been sick, and was recovered from his sickness. 
I said, I shall go to the gates of the grave in the midst of my 
days : I am deprived of the residue of my years. I said, I shall 
not see Jehovah, Jehovah in the land of the living : I shall 
behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world. My 
generation is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's 
tent : I have rolled up like a weaver my life ; he will cut me olf 
from the loom ; from day even to night wilt thou make an end 
of me. I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he 
break all my bones : from day even to night wilt thou make an 
end of me. Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter ; I did 
mourn as a dove : mine eyes fail with looking upward ; 0 
Jehovah, I am oppressed ; undertake for me. What shall I 
say ? He hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done 
it : I shall go softly all my years, for the bitterness of my 



442 



ISAIAH XXXVIII., XXXIX. 



16 soul. 0 Lord, by these things men live, and in all these 
things is the life of my spirit : so wilt thou recover me, and 

17 make me to live. Behold, my bitterness, my bitterness, 
is turned to peace : and thou hast loved my soul from the 
pit of corruption ; for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy 

is back. For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate 
thee : they that go down into the pit can not hope for thy 

19 truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this 
day : the father to the children shall make known thy truth. 

20 Jehovah was ready to save me : and we will sing my songs to 
the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of 
Jehovah. 

->i For Isaiah had said, Let them take a lump of figs, and lay it 
22 for a plaister upon the boil, and he shall recover. Hezekiah also 

had said, What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of 

Jehovah ? 



XXXIX. 

XXXIX. i At that time Merodach-Baladan, the son of Baladan, 
king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah : for he 

2 had heard that he had been sick, and was recovered. And Heze- 
kiah was glad of them, and showed them the house of his pre- 
cious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the 
precious ointment, and all the house of his armour, and all that 
was found in his treasures : there was nothing in his house, nor 
in all his dominion, that Hezekiah showed them not. 

3 Then came Isaiah the prophet unto king Hezekiah, and said 
unto him, What said these men ? and from whence came they 
unto thee ? And Hezekiah said, They are come from a far 

4 country unto me, from Babylon. Then said he, What have they 
seen in thine house ? And Hezekiah answered, All that is in 
mine house have they seen : there is nothing among my 
treasures that I have not showed them. 

5 And Isaiah said to Hezekiah, Hear the word of the Lord of 

6 hosts : Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, 
and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, 
shall be carried to Babylon : nothing shall be left, saith Jehovah. 

7 And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, whieh thou shalt 
beget, shall they take away ; and they shall be eunuchs in the 
palace of the king of Babylon. 

a And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, Good is the word of Jphovah 



ISAIAH XL. 



443 



which thou hast spoken. And he said, For there shall be peace 
and truth in my days. 



XL. 

XL. i 2 Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak 
ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare 
is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned : that she hath 
received of the hand of Jehovah double for all her sins. 

3 The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye the way of Jehovah 
in the wilderness : make straight in the desert a highway for our 

4 God. Every valley shall be raised, and every mountain and 
hill shall be made low ; and the crooked shall be made straight, 

5 and the rough places plain : and the glory of Jehovah shall be 
revealed, and all flesh shall see it together ; for the mouth of 
Jehovah hath spoken it. 

6 The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry ? All 
flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of 

7 the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the 
breath of Jehovah bloweth upon it : surely the people is grass. 

8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth : but the word of our 
God shall stand for ever. 

9 Get thee up into a high mountain, 0 Zion, that bringest 
good tidings : lift up thy voice with strength, 0 Jerusalem, that 
bringest good tidings : lift it up, be not afraid ; say unto the 

10 cities of Judah, Behold your God ! Behold the Lord Jehovah 
will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him : 
behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. 

11 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd ; he shall gather the 
lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom : he shall 
gently lead the milch ewes. 

12 Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, 
and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the 
dust of the earth in a measure : and weighed the mountains in 

is scales, and the hills in a balance ? Who hath directed the 
spirit of Jehovah : or being his counsellor hath taught him ? 

u With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and 
taught him in the path of judgment : and taught him knowledge, 

is and showed him the way of understanding ? Behold, the 
nations are as a drop on a bucket, and are counted as the 
small dust on the balance : behold, he taketh up the isles as an 

16 atom of dust. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn : nor the 
beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. 



444 



ISAIAH XL., XL! 



17 All nations before him are as nothing : and they are counted 
is to him less than nothing, and vanity. To whom then will ye 

19 liken God ? or what likeness will ye compare unto him ? The 
workman melteth an image : and the goldsmith spreadeth it over 

20 with gold, and casteth silver chains ! He that is too poor 
for a great oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot : he 
seeketh unto him a cunning workman, to prepare an image 

21 that will not shake ! Will ye not know ? will ye not hear ? 
hath it not been told you from the beginning ? have ye not 

22 understood from the foundations of the earth ? It is He that 
sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof 
are as grasshoppers ; that stretcheth out the heavens as a cur- 

28 tain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in : that 
bringeth the princes to nothing ; he maketh the judges of the earth 

24 as vanity. Yea, they are hardly planted ; yea, they are hardly 
sown ; yea, their stock hath hardly taken root in the earth : and 
he hath only breathed upon them, and they are withered, and 

25 the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. To whom then 

26 will ye liken me, or shall I be equal ? saith the Holy One. Lift 
up your eyes on high, and behold ! Who hath created these 
things ? He bringeth out their host by number : he calleth 
them all by name, by the greatness of his might, for that he is 
strong in power ; not one faileth. 

27 Why sayest thou, 0 Jacob, and why speakest thou, 0 Israel, 
My way is hid from Jehovah, and my cause is passed over 

28 by my God ? Hast thou not known ? hast thou not heard ? 
Jehovah is an everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the 
earth : he fainteth not, neither is weary ; there is no searching 

29 of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint : and to 
so them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the 

youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall 
31 utterly fall : but they that wait upon Jehovah shall renew 
their strength : they shall lift up their wings like eagles ; they 
shall run, and not be weary, they shall walk, and not faint. 
XLI. i Keep silence before me, 0 islands ; and let the people re- 
new their strength : let them come near, then let them speak ; 

2 let us come near together to judgment. Who hath raised up 
one from the east, whom righteousness shall meet in his steps ? 
he shall give the nations before him, and make him tread upon 
kings ; he shall give them as the dust to his sword, and as 

3 driven stubble to his bow. He shall pursue them, he shall pass 

4 safely : by a way that he had not gone with his feet. Who 
hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the 



ISAIAH XLI 



445 



beginning ? I Jehovah, the first, and with the last : I am He. 

5 The isles have seen it, and feared, the ends of the earth tremble : 

6 they have drawn near, and come. They help every one his 
neighbour: and every one saith to his brother, Be of good 

7 courage. And the carpenter has encouraged the goldsmith, 
and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smiteth the 
anvil : he saith of the sodering, it is goad ; and he fasteneth 
it with nails, that it shall not shake. 

| But thou, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen ; 

9 the seed of Abraham my friend : thou whom I have taken 
from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the borders 
thereof; and said unto thee, Thou art my servant, I have chosen 

10 thee, and not cast thee away : — fear thou not, for I am with 
thee ; be not dismayed, for I am thy God : I will strengthen 
thee ; yea, I will help thee ; yea I will uphold thee with the 

n right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all they that were 
incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded : they 
shall be as nothing ; and they that strive with thee shall 

12 perish. Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, even 
them that contended with thee : they that war against thee 

13 shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought. For I Jehovah 
thy God do hold thy right hand : saying unto thee, Fear not, 
I will help thee. 

14 Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel : I will 
help thee, saith Jehovah, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of 

15 Israel. Behold I will make of thee a new sharp threshing 
instrument having teeth : thou shalt thresh the mountains, and 

16 beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt 
fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirl- 
wind shall scatter them : and thou shalt rejoice in Jehovah, and 
shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel. 

it The poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their 
tongue faileth for thirst : I Jehovah will hear them, I the God of 

is Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on bare hills, and 
fountains in the midst of the valleys : I will make the wilderness 

19 a pool of water, and the dry lands springs of water. I will plant 
in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, and the myrtle, and the 
oil tree ; I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane, and the 

20 fir tree together : that they may see, and know, and consider, 
and understand together, that the hand of Jehovah hath done 
this ; and the Holy One of Israel hath created it. 

21 Produce your cause, saith Jehovah : bring forth your strong 

22 reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring forth, and 



4*6 



ISAIAH XII, XIII 



show us, the things that shall happen : let them show the 
former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and 
know the latter end of them ; or declare us things for to come. 

23 Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know 
that ye are gods : yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dis- 

24 mayed, and behold it together. Behold, ye are nothing, and 
your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth 
you. 

25 I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come; 
from the rising of the sun shall he call upon my name : and he 
shall come upon the princes as upon mortar, and as the potter 

26 treadeth clay. Who hath declared from the beginning, that we 
may know ? and beforetime, that we may say, It is right ? 
Yea, there is none that showeth, yea, there is none that de- 

27 clareth, yea, there is none that heareth your words. I am the first 
to say to Zion, Behold, behold them : and to give to Jerusalem 

28 one that bringeth good tidings. For I looked, and there was no 
man, even among them, and there was no counsellor : that when 

29 I asked of them could answer a word. Behold, they are all 
vanity ; their works are nothing : their molten images are wind 
and confusion. 

XLII. l Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom 
my soul delighteth ; I have put my spirit upon him : he shall 

2 bring forth judgment to the nations. He shall not cry, nor lift 

3 up : nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed 
shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench : 

4 he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail, nor 
be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth : and the 
isles shall wait for his law. 

5 Thus saith God, Jehovah, He that created the heavens, and 
stretched them out ; he that spread forth the earth, and that 
which cometh out of it ; he that giveth breath unto the people 

6 upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein : I Jehovah have 
called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand ; and will 
keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a 

7 light of the Gentiles : to open the blind eyes, to bring out 
the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness 

s out of the prison house. I am Jehovah ; that is my name : 
and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise 

9 to graven images. Behold, the former things are come to pass, 
and new things do I declare : before they spring forth I tell 
you of them. 

io Sing unto Jehovah a new song, and his praise from the end 



ISAIAH XLII, XLIIL 



44 7 



of the earth : ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein ; 

11 the isles and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and 
the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth 
inhabit : let the inhabitants of the Rock sing, let them shout 

12 from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto 
is Jehovah: and declare his praise in the islands. Jehovah shall 

go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up his zeal like a man 
of war : he shall shout, yea, roar ; he shall behave himself 
mightily against his enemies. 

14 I have long time holden my peace ; I have been still, and re- 
frained myself : now will I cry like a travailing woman ; I will 

is destroy and devour at once. I will make waste mountains and 
hills, and dry up all their herbs : and I will make the rivers islands, 

16 and I will dry up the pools. And I will bring the blind by a 
way that they knew not ; I will lead them in paths that they 
have not known : I will make darkness light before them, and 
crooked things straight ; these things will I do with them, and 

17 not forsake them. They shall be turned back, they shall be 
greatly ashamed : that trust in graven images, that say to the 
molten images, Ye are our gods. 

is 19 Hear, ye deaf: and look, ye blind, that ye may see. Who 
is blind, but my servant ? or deaf, as my messenger whom I 
send ? Who is blind as he that is consecrated, and blind as the 

20 servant of Jehovah? Seeing many things, but thou observest 

21 not : opening the ears, but he heareth not. Jehovah is well 
pleased for his righteousness sake : he will magnify the law, and 

22 make it honourable. But this is a people robbed and spoiled ; 
they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison 
houses : they are for a prey, and none delivereth ; for a spoil, 

23 and none saith, Restore. Who among you will give ear to this? 

24 who will hearken and hear for the time to come ? Who gave 
Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers ? did not Jehovah ? 
— he against whom we have sinned ; for they would not walk 

25 in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law. There- 
fore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the 
strength of battle : and it hath set him on fire round about, yet 
he knew not ; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart. 

XLIIL i But now thus saith Jehovah that created thee, 0 Jacob, 
and he that formed thee, 0 Israel : Fear not, for I have redeemed 

2 thee ; I have called thee by thy name ; thou art mine. When thou 
passest through the waters, I will be with thee ; and through 
the rivers, they shall not overflow thee : when thou walkest 
through the fire, thou shalt not be burned ; neither shall the 



44 8 



ISAIAH XLIII 



3 flame kindle upon thee. For I am Jehovah thy God, the Holy- 
one of Israel, thy Saviour : I have given Egypt for thy ransom, 

4 Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Since thou wast precious in my 
sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee : there- 

5 fore I will give men for thee, and nations for thy life. Fear 
not, for I am with thee : I will bring thy seed from the east, 

6 and gather thee from the west. I will say to the north, Give 
up ; and to the south, Keep not back : bring my sons from far, 

7 and my daughters from the ends of the earth ; even every one 
that is called by my name : for I have created him for my 

8 glory, I have formed him, yea, I have made him. Bring forth 
the blind people, that have eyes : and the deaf, that have ears. 

9 Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the peoples be 
assembled ; who among them can declare this, and show us 
former things ? Let them bring forth their witnesses, that 
they may be justified ; or let them hear, and say, It is truth. 

10 Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I 
have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and under- 
stand that I am he : before me there was no God formed, 
neither shall there be after me. 

11 I, even I, am Jehovah: and beside me there is no saviour. 

12 I have declared, and have saved, and have showed, and there 
was no strange god among you : therefore ye are my witnesses, 

13 saith Jehovah, that I am God. Yea, before the day was I am 
he ; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand : I will 
work, and who shall let it ? 

14 Thus saith Jehovah, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel ; 
for your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down 
all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is in the ships. 

15 I am Jehovah, your Holy One : the Creator of Israel, your 
King. 

16 Thus saith Jehovah, which maketh a way in the sea; and 

17 a path in the mighty waters : which bringeth forth the 
chariot and horse, the army and the power ; they shall lie 
down together, they shall not rise; they are extinct, they are 

18 quenched as tow. Remember ye not the former things : neither 

19 consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now 
it shall spring forth ; shall ye not know it ? I will even make 

20 a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. The beast 
of the field shall honour me, the wolves and the ostriches : 
because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the 

21 desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen. This people 
have I formed for myself: they shall show forth my praise. 



ISAIAH XIIII, XLIV. 



449 



22 But thou hast not called upon me, 0 Jacob : but thou hast been 

23 weary of me, 0 Israel. Thou hast not brought me the small cattle 
of thy burnt offerings, neither hast thou honoured me with thy 
sacrifices : I have not caused thee to serve with an offering, nor 

24 wearied thee with incense. Thou hast bought me no sweet 
cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy 
sacrifices : but thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou 

25 hast wearied me with thine iniquities. I, even I, am he that 
blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake : and I will 

26 not remember thy sins. Put me in remembrance ; let us plead 

27 together : declare thou, that thou mayest be justified. Thy 
first father hath sinned : and thy teachers have transgressed 

28 against me. And I have profaned the princes of the sanctuary: 
and have given Jacob to the curse, and Israel to reproaches. 

XLIV. l Yet now hear, 0 Jacob my servant : and Israel whom 

2 I have chosen. Thus saith Jehovah that made thee, and that 
formed thee from the womb, which will help thee : Fear not, 
0 Jacob, my servant ; and thou, Jesurun, whom I have chosen. 

3 For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon 
the dry ground : I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and 

4 my blessing upon thine offspring. And they shall spring up 

5 among the grass : as willows by the water courses. One shall 
say, I am Jehovah's ; and another shall call himself by the 
name of Jacob : and another shall subscribe with his hand unto 
Jehovah, and surname himself by the name of Israel. 

6 Thus saith Jehovah the King of Israel, and his redeemer the 
Lokd of hosts : I am the first, and I am the last ; and beside 

7 me there is no God. And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare 
it, and set it in order for me, since I founded the ancient 
people ? and the things that are coming, and shall come, let 

8 them show unto them. Fear ye not, neither be afraid ; have 
not I told thee from that time, and have declared it ? and ye 
are my witnesses : is there a God beside me ? yea, there is 

9 no Rock ; I know not any. They that make a graven image 
are all of them vanity ; and their delectable things shall not 
profit : and their witnesses see not, nor know ; that they 

10 may be ashamed. Who hath formed a god, or molten an 

11 image : that is profitable for nothing? Behold, all his fellows 
shall be ashamed ; and the workmen, they are of men : let 
them all be gathered together, let them stand up ; yet they 

12 shall fear, and they shall be ashamed together. The smith 
with the tongs worketh in the coals, and fashioneth it with ham- 
mers : and he worketh it with the strength of his arms, yea, he 

G G 



450 



ISAIAH XLIV. 



is hungry, and his strength faileth ; he drinketh no water, and 

13 is faint. The carpenter stretcheth out his rule ; he marketh it 
out with a line ; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out 
with the compass : and he maketh it after the figure of a man, 
according to the beauty of a man, that it may remain in the 

14 house. He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress 
and the oak, which he strengtheneth for himself among the 
trees of the forest : he planteth an ash, and the rain doth 

15 nourish it. Then shall it be for a man to burn ; for he will 
take thereof, and warm himself ; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh 
bread : yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth it ; he maketh it 

16 a graven image, and faileth down thereto. He burneth part 
thereof in the fire ; with part thereof he heateth flesh ; he 
roasteth roast, and is satisfied : yea, he warmeth himself, and 

17 saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire. And the residue 
thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image : he faileth 
down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and 

18 saith, Deliver me ; for thou art my god. They have not 
known, nor understood : for he hath shut their eyes that 
they cannot see ; and their hearts that they cannot under- 

19 stand. And none consider eth in his heart, neither is there 
knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of 
it in the fire ; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals 
thereof; I have roasted flesh, and eaten it: and shall I make 
the residue thereof an abomination ? shall I fall down to the 

20 stock of a tree ? He feedeth on ashes ; a deceived heart hath 
turned him aside : and he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is 
there not a lie in my right hand ? 

21 Kemember these things, 0 Jacob and Israel; for thou art my 
servant : I have formed thee ; thou art my servant ; 0 Israel, 

22 thou shalt not be forgotten of me. I have blotted out, as a 
thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins : 

23 return unto me ; for I have redeemed thee. Sing, 0 ye 
heavens, for Jehovah hath done it ; shout, ye depths of 
the earth, break forth into singing, ye mountains, 0 forest, 
and every tree therein : for Jehovah hath redeemed Jacob, 

24 and gloried himself in Israel. Thus saith Jehovah, thy 
redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am 
Jehovah that maketh all things ; that stretcheth forth the 
heavens alone ; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself : 

25 that frustrate th the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners 
mad ; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their 

26 knowledge foolish : that confirmeth the word of his servant, 



ISAIAH XI V. 



45 



and performeth the counsel of his messengers; that saith to 
Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited ; and to the cities of Judah, 
Ye shall be built, and I will raise up the decayed places thereof : 

27 that saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up the rivers : 

28 that saith to Coresh, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all 
my pleasure : even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built ; 
and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. 

XLV. i Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Coresh, whose 
right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, and I 
will loose the loins of kings : to open before him the two-leaved 

2 gates, and the gates shall not be shut. I will go before thee, 
and make the crooked places straight : I will break in pieces 

3 the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron. And I 
will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of 
secret places : that thou mayest know that it is I, Jehovah, 

4 which call thee by thy name, even the God of Israel. For 
Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect : therefore, I 
will call thee by thy name ; I will surname thee, though thou 

5 hast not known me. I am Jehovah, and there is none else, 
there is no God beside me ; I will gird thee, though thou hast 

6 not known me : that they may know, from the rising of the sun 
to his going down, that there is none beside me ; I am Jehovab, 

7 and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness ; 
I make peace, and create evil : I, Jehovah, do all these things. 

8 Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour 
down righteousness : let the earth open, and let salvation and 
righteousness spring up, let her bring them forth together ; I 

9 Jehovah have created it. Woe unto him that striveth with his 
Maker ! — a potsherd of the potsherds of the earth ! Shall the 
clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou ? or thy 

10 work, He hath no hands ? Woe unto him that saith unto his 
father, What begettest thou ? or to the woman, What dost 
thou bring forth ? 

n Thus saith Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker : 
Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning 

12 the work of my hands command ye me. I have made the earth, 
and created man upon it : I, even my hands, have stretched out 

13 the heavens, and all their hosts have I commanded. I have 
raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways : 
he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for 
price nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts. 

u Thus saith Jehovah, the labour of Egypt, and merchandise of 
Ethiopia, and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over 

o _g 2 



452 ISAIAH XLV., XLVI. 

unto thee, and they shall be thine ; they shall come after thee, 
in chains they shall come over : and they shall fall down unto 
thee, they shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God 

15 is in thee, and there is none else, there is no God. Verily thou 
art a God that hidest thyself : 0 God of Israel, the Saviour. 

16 They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of them : they 

17 shall go into confusion together that are makers of idols. But 
Israel shall be saved in Jehovah with an everlasting salvation : 
ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end. 

is For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens ; God himself 
that formed the earth and made it ; he hath established it, he 
created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited : I am 

19 Jehovah ; and there is none else. I have not spoken in secret, 
in a dark place of the earth ; I said not unto the seed of Jacob, 
Seek ye me in vain : I Jehovah speak righteousness, I declare 

20 things that are right. Assemble yourselves and come ; draw 
near together, ye that are escaped of the nations : they have 
no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, 

21 and pray unto a god that cannot save. Tell ye, and bring them 
near : yea, let them take counsel together : who hath declared 
this from ancient time ? who hath told it of old ? have not I 
Jehovah ? and there is no God else beside me ; a just God and 

22 a saviour ; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye 
saved, all the ends of the earth : for I am God, and there is 

23 none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of 
my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return : that unto me 

24 every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Only in 
Jehovah have I righteousness and strength, shall he say : 
unto him shall they come, and all that are incensed against 

25 him shall be ashamed. In Jehovah shall all the seed of Israel 
be justified, and shall glory. 

XLVI. i Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols are laid 
upon the beasts, and upon the cattle : these, which you carried 
in processions, are packed up, a burden to the weary beast. 

2 They stoop, they bow down together : they could not deliver 
the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity. 

3 Hearken unto me, 0 house of Jacob, and all the remnant of 
the house of Israel ; which are borne by me from the womb, 

4 which are carried from the birth : and to your old age I am he, 
and to hoar hairs will I carry you ; I have made, and I will 
bear, and I will carry, and will deliver you. 

5 To whom will ye liken me, and make me equal : and compare 

6 me, that we may be like ? They lavish gold out of the bag, and 



ISAIAH XL VI., XL VII. 



453 



weigh silver in the balance, and hire a goldsmith ; and he maketh 

7 it a god: they fall down, yea, they worship. They bear him 
upon the shoulder, they carry him, and set him in his place, and 
he standeth ; from his place shall he not remove : yea, one shall 
cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor save him out of his 
trouble. 

8 Remember this, and show yourselves men : bring it again to 

9 mind, 0 ye transgressors. Remember the former things of old : 
for I am God, and there is none else ; I am God, and there is 

lOAnone like me: declaring the end from the beginning, and from 
ancient times the things that are not yet done ; saying, My 

n counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: calling a 
ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel 
from a far country : yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to 

12 pass ; I have purposed it, I will also do it. Hearken unto me, 

13 ye stouthearted, that are far from righteousness : I bring near 
my righteousness. It shall not be far off, and my salvation shall 
not tarry : and I will place salvation in Zion for Israel my 
glory. 

XLYII. i Come down, and sit in the dust, 0 virgin daughter of 
Babylon, sit on the ground ; there is no throne, 0 daughter of the 
Chaldeans : for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. 

2 Take the millstones, and grind meal : uncover thy locks, lift up 

3 thy skirt, make bare the leg, pass over the rivers. Thy naked- 
ness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen : I will 
take vengeance, and I will spare no man. 

4 As for our redeemer, the Lord of hosts is his name : the Holy 

5 One of Israel. Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, 0 
daughter of the Chaldeans : for thou shalt no more be called, 

6 The lady of kingdoms. I was wroth with my people, I have 
polluted mine inheritance, and given them into thine hand : 
thou didst show them no mercy ; upon the ancient hast thou 

7 very heavily laid thy yoke. And thou saidst, I shall be a lady 
for ever : so that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, 
neither didst remember the latter end of it. 

8 Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that 
dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none 
else beside me ; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know 

9 the loss of children : but these two things shall come to thee in 
a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood : they 
shall come upon thee in their perfection, for the multitude of thy 
sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments. 

10 For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness ; thou hast said, None 



454 



ISAIAH XL VII, XL VIII 



seeth me ; thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted 
thee : and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else 

11 beside me. Therefore shall evil come upon thee ; thou shalt 
not know from whence it riseth : and mischief shall fall upon 
thee ; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and a desolation shall 

12 come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know. Stand 
now with thine enchantments, and with the multitudes of thy 
sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth : if so be 

13 thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou 
art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels : let now the astro- 
logers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and 

14 save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, 
they shall be as stubble ; the fire shall burn them ; they shall 
not deliver themselves from the power of the flame : there shall 

15 not be a coal to warm it, nor fire to sit before it. Thus shall they 
be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured : and they which 
have trafficked with thee from thy youth, they shall wander 
every one to his quarter ; none shall save thee. 

XL VIII. i Hear ye this, 0 house of Jacob, which are called by 
the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of 
Judah : which swear by the name of Jehovah, and make mention 
of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness. 

2 For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves 
upon the God of Israel : the Loed of hosts is his name. 

3 I have declared the former things from the beginning ; and 
they went forth out of my mouth, and I showed them : I did 

4 them suddenly, and they came to pass. Because I knew that 
thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow 

5 brass ; I have even from the beginning declared it to thee ; before 
it came to pass I showed it thee : lest thou shouldst say, Mine idol 
hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, 

6 hath commanded them. Thou hast heard, — see all this ; and 
will not ye declare it ? I have showed thee new things from 
this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them. 

7 They are created now, and not from the beginning ; and before 
to-day thou heardest them not ; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I 

s knew them. Yea, thou heardest not : yea, thou knewest not ; yea, 
of old thine ear was not opened : for I knew thou wouldest deal 
very treacherously, and wast called a rebel from the womb. For 

9 my name's sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will 

10 I refrain for thee : that I cut thee not off. Behold, I have refined 
thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of 

11 affliction. For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do 



ISAIAH XL VIII, XLIX. 



455 



it ; for how should my name be polluted ? And I will not give 
my glory unto another. 

12 Hearken unto me, 0 Jacob, and Israel, my called : I am he ; 

13 I am the first, I also am the last. Mine hand also hath laid the 
foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the 

u heavens : I call unto them, and they stand up together. All ye, 
assemble yourselves, and hear ; which among them hath declared 
these things '? Jehovah hath loved him ; he will do his pleasure 

15 on Babylon, and his arm shall be on the Chaldeans. I, even I, 
have spoken ; yea, I have called him : I have brought him, and 

16 he hath prospered in his way. Come ye near unto me, hear ye 
this ; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning ; from the 
time that it was, there am I : and now the Lord Jehovah and 

17 his spirit hath sent me. Thus saith Jehovah, thy redeemer, 
the Holy One of Israel : I am Jehovah thy God, which teacheth 
thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest 

is go. 0 that thou wouldest hearken to my commandments ! then 
should thy peace be as a river, and thy righteousness as the 

19 waves of the sea. Thy seed also should be as the sand, and the 
offspring of thy body like the gravel thereof : his name should 
not be cut off, nor destroyed from before me. 

20 Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans, with a 
voice of shouting ; declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of 
the earth : say ye, Jehovah hath redeemed his servant Jacob. 

21 And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts ; 
he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them : he clave 

22 the rock also, and the waters gushed out. There is no peace, 
saith Jehovah, unto the wicked. 

XLIX. i Listen, 0 isles, unto me ; and hearken, ye nations, from 
far : Jehovah hath called me from the womb ; since my mother 

2 conceived me hath he made mention of my name. And he hath 
made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand 
hath he hid me : and he made me a polished shaft, in his quiver 

3 hath he hid me. And he said unto me, Thou art my servant, 0 

4 Israel, in whom I will be glorified. And I said, I have laboured 
in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain : 
yet surely my judgment is with Jehovah, and my work with 
my God. 

5 And now, saith Jehovah, that formed me from the womb to 
be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, and to gather 
Israel unto him : yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of Jehovah, 

6 and my God shall be my strength. And he saith, It is a light 
thiDg that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes 



45 6 



ISAIAH XLIX. 



of Jacob, and restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give 
thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salva- 
tion unto the end of the earth. 

7 Thus saith Jehovah, the redeemer of Israel, and his Holy 
One; to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation 
abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, 
princes also shall worship : because of Jehovah that is faithful, 

8 the Holy One of Israel, who shall choose thee. Thus saith 
Jehovah, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day 
of salvation have I helped thee ; and I will preserve thee, and 
give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to 

9 cause to inherit the desolate' heritages ; to say to the prisoners, 
Go forth ; to them that are in darkness, Show yourselves : 
they shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be on all 

10 bare hills. They shall not hunger nor thirst ; neither shall the 
heat nor sun smite them : for he that hath mercy on them shall 
lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them. 

n And I will make all my mountains a way, and my highways 

12 shall be cast up. Behold, these shall come from far : and, lo, 
these from the north and from the west ; and these from the 

13 land of Sinim. Shout, 0 heavens ; and be joyful, 0 earth ; and 
break forth into shouting, 0 mountains : for Jehovah hath com- 
forted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted. 

14 But Zion saith, Jehovah hath forsaken me : and my Lord hath 

15 forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she 
should not have compassion on the son of her womb ? yea, 

16 they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have 
graven thee upon the palms of my hands : thy walls are con- 

17 tinually before me. Thy children shall, make haste : thy de- 
stroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee. 

is Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold ; all of these gather 
themselves together, and come to thee : as I live, saith 
Jehovah, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with 

19 an ornament, and bind them on thee, as a bride doeth. For 
thy wastes, and thy desolate places, and the land of thy 
destruction, shall even now be too narrow for the inhabitants, 

20 and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away. The sons 
of thee that wast childless, shall say again in thine ears : The 
place is too strait for me ; make room for me that I may 

21 dwell. Then shalt thou say in thy heart, Who hath borne me 
these, seeing I was childless and barren ; a captive, and re- 
moved to and fro, and who hath brought up these ? Behold, I 
was left alone ; these, where had they been ? 



ISAIAH XL IX., L. 



457 



22 Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, behold I will lift up my hand 
to the nations, and set up my standard to the peoples : and they 
shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be 

23 carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing 
fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers ; they shall bow 
down to thee with their face toward to the earth, and lick the 
dust of thy feet : and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah, for 
they shall not be ashamed that wait for me. 

24 Shall the prey be taken from the mighty : or the lawful 

25 captive delivered ? But thus saith Jehovah, Even the captives of 
the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible 
shall be delivered : for I will contend with him that con- 

26 tendeth with thee, and I will save thy children. And I will 
feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh ; and they 
shall be drunken with their own blood, as with new wine : and 
all flesh shall know that I Jehovah am thy saviour, and thy 
redeemer the Mighty One of Jacob. 

L. i Thus saith Jehovah, Where is the bill of your mother's 
divorcement, whom I have put away ? or which of my creditors 
is it to whom I have sold you ? Behold^ for your iniquities have 
ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother 

2 put away. Wherefore, when I came, was there no man ? 
when I called, was there none to answer ? Is my hand 
shortened at all, that it cannot redeem ? or have I no power 
to deliver ? Behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the 
rivers a wilderness : their fish rotteth, because there is no water, 

3 and dieth for thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness : and 
I make sackcloth their covering. 

i The Lord Jehovah hath given me the tongue of the learned, 
that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that 
is weary ; he wakeneth me morning by morning, he wakeneth 

5 mine ear to fear as the learned. The Lord Jehovah hath opened 
mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. 

6 I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that 
plucked off the hair : I hid not my face from shame and spitting. 

7 For the Lord Jehovah will help me ; therefore shall I not be 
confounded : therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know 

8 that I shall not be ashamed. He is near that justifieth me ; who 
will contend with me ? let us stand together : who is mine 

9 adversary ? let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord 
Jehovah will help me ; who is he that shall condemn me ? 
lo, they all shall wax old as a garment ; the moth shall eat 
them up. 



458 ISAIAH L., LI 

10 Who is among you that feareth Jehovah, that obeyeth the 
voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no 
light ? let him trust in the name of Jehovah, and stay upon 

11 his God. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass your- 
selves about with sparks : walk in the light of your fire, and in 
the sparks that ye have kindled ; this shall ye have of mine 
hand ; ye shall lie down in sorrow. 

LI. i Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that 
seek Jehovah : look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to 

2 the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham 
your father, and unto Sarah that bare you : for I called him 

3 alone, and I blessed him, and increased him. For Jehovah shall 
comfort Zion ; he will comfort all her waste places ; and he will 
make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden 
of Jehovah: joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanks- 
giving, and the voice of melody. 

4 Hearken unto me, my people ; and give ear unto me, 0 my 
nation : for a law shall go forth from me, and I will establish 

5 my judgment for a light of the nations. My righteousness is 
near; my salvation is gone forth; and mine arms shall judge 
the nations : the isles shall wait upon me, and in mine arm 
shall they trust. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look 
upon the earth beneath ; for the heavens shall vanish away like 
smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they 
that dwell therein shall die in like manner : but my salvation 
shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. 

7 Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in 
whose heart is my law : fear ye not the reproach of men, 

8 neither be ye afraid of their revilings. For the moth shall eat 
them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like 
wool : but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation 
from generation to generation. 

9 Awake ! awake ! put on strength, 0 arm of Jehovah ; awake ! 
as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou 
not it that hewed Rahab in pieces, that wounded the dragon ? 

10 Art thou not it which dried the sea, the waters of the great deep : 
that made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass 

n over ? Therefore the redeemed of Jehovah shall return, and come 
with shouting unto Zion ; and everlasting joy shall be upon 
their head : they shall obtain gladness and joy ; sorrow and 

12 mourning shall flee away. I, even I, am he that comforteth 
you ; who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that 
shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass : 



ISAIAH LI, III 



459 



13 and forgettest Jehovah thy maker, that hath stretched forth the 
heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth ; and hast feared 
continually every day, because of the fury of the oppressor, as he 
maketh ready to destroy ? and where is the fury of the op- 

14 pressor ? The prisoner shall soon be loosed : and he shall not 

15 die in the dungeon, and his bread shall not fail. For I am 
Jehovah thy God, that stirreth up the sea, and its waves 

16 roar : the Loed of hosts is his name. And I have put my 
words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of 
mine hand : that I may plant the heavens, and lay the founda- 
tions of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people. 

17 Awake ! awake ! stand up, 0 Jerusalem, which has drunk 
at the hand of Jehovah the cup of his wrath : thou hast 

18 drunken the goblet cup of trembling, and wrung it out. There is 
none to guide her among all the sons whom she hath brought 
forth : neither is there any that taketh her by the hand of all 

19 the sons that she hath brought up. These two things are come 
unto thee ; who shall be sorry for thee ? desolation, and de- 
struction, and the famine and the sword ; by whom shall I 

20 comfort thee ? Thy sons have fainted, they lie at the head of 
all the streets, as a wild bull in a net : they are full of the 
wrath of Jehovah, the rebuke of thy God. 

21 Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not 

22 with wine : thus saith thy Lord Jehovah, and thy God that 
pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of 
thine hand the cup of trembling : the goblet cup of my wrath, 

23 thou shalt no more drink it again. But I will put it into the 
hand of them that afflict thee ; which have said to thy soul, 
Bow down, that we may go over : and thou hast laid thy body 
as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over. 

LII. l Awake ! awake ! put on thy strength, 0 Zion ; put on thy 
beautiful garments, 0 Jerusalem, the holy city : for henceforth 
there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the 

2 unclean. Shake thyself from the dust ; arise, and sit down, 0 
Jerusalem : loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, 0 captive 
daughter of Zion. 

3 For thus saith Jehovah, Ye have sold yourselves for nought : 

4 and ye shall be redeemed without money. For thus saith the 
Lord Jehovah, My people went down aforetime into Egypt to 
sojourn there : and the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. 

5 Now therefore, what have I here, saith Jehovah, that my 
people is taken away for nought ? their oppressors exult, saith 
Jehovah ; and my name continually every day is blasphemed. 



460 



ISAIAH LIL, LIII. 



6 Therefore my people shall know my name : therefore they shall 
know in that day that I am he that doth speak ; behold, it 
is I. 

7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that 
bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good 
tidings of good, that publisheth salvation : that saith unto Zion, 
Thy Go*d reigneth. The voice of thy watchmen ! they lift up 

8 the voice ; together do they shout : for they see eye to eye, 
how Jehovah doth bring again Zion. Break forth into joy, shout 

9 together, ye waste places of Jerusalem : for Jehovah hath com- 

10 forted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. Jehovah hath 
made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations : and all 

11 the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. Depart 
ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing : 
go ye out of the midst of her ; be ye clean, ye that bear the 

12 vessels of Jehovah. For ye shall not go out with haste, nor go 
by flight : for Jehovah will go before you ; and the God of Israel 
will be your r ere ward. 

13 Behold, my servant shall deal wisely : he shall be exalted and 

14 extolled, and be very high. As many were astonished at thee ; 
his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form 

15 more than the sons of men : so shall he sprinkle many 
nations ; kings shall shut their mouths before him : for that 
which had not been told them shall they see ; and that which 
they had not heard shall they consider. 

LIII. 1 Who hath believed our report ? And to whom is the arm 

2 of Jehovah revealed ? For he shall grow up before him as a 
tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground : he hath no 
form nor comeliness ; and when we shall see him, there is no 

3 beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected 
of men ; a man -of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we 
hid as it were our faces from him ; he was despised, and we 

4 esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried 
our sorrows : yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, 

5 and afflicted . But he was wounded for our transgressions, he 
was bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of our peace was 

6 upon him ; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like 
sheep have gone astray .; we have turned every one to his own 

7 way : and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He 
was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his 
mouth ; as a lamb that is brought to the slaughter, and as a sheep 
before her shearers is dumb : so he opened not his mouth. He 
was taken from prison and from judgment; and who shall 



ISAIAH ZIIL, LIV. 



4* 



declare his generation ? for he was cut off out of the land of 
the living ; for the transgression of my people was he stricken. 
9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in 
his death : although he had done no violence, neither was any 

10 deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him ; he 
hath put him to grief : when thou shalt make his soul an offer- 
ing for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and 

n the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand. He shall 
see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied : by his 
knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many ; for he 

12 shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion 
with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong ; 
because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and was 
numbered with the transgressors : and he bare the sin of many, 
and made intercession for the transgressors. 

LIV. t Sing, 0 barren, thou that didst not bear ; break forth into 
singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child : 
for more are the children of the desolate than the children of 

2 the married wife, saith Jehovah. Enlarge the place of thy 
tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy dwellings ; 

3 spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes ; for 
thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left : and 
thy seed shall inherit the nations, and shall people the desolate 

4 cities. Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed ; neither be thou 
confounded, for thou shalt not be put to shame : for thou shalt 
forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the 

5 reproach of thy widowhood any more. For thy Maker is thine 
husband ; the Lord of hosts is his name : and thy Redeemer, the 
Holy One of Israel ; the God of the whole earth shall he be 

6 called. For Jehovah hath called thee, as a wife forsaken and 
grieved in spirit : and as a wife of youth, who was put away, 

7 saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee : but 
s with great mercies will I gather thee. In a gush of wrath, 

I hid my face from thee for a moment ; but with everlasting 
kindness will I have mercy on thee : saith Jehovah thy 

9 redeemer. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me ; when 
I sware that the waters of Noah should no more go over the 
earth : so have I sworn that I will not be wroth with thee, and 

10 that I will not rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, 
and the hills be removed: but my kindness shall not depart 
from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, 
said Jehovah that hath mercy on thee. 

11 0 thou afflicted, tempest-tossed, uncomforted ; behold I will 



462 



ISAIAH LIV., L V. 



lay thy stones with fair colours, and thy foundations with sap- 

12 phires : and I will make thy battlements of rubies, and thy 
gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of precious stones. 

13 And all thy children shall be taught of Jehovah : and great 
u shall be the peace of thy children. In righteousness shalt thou 

be established : thou shalt be far from oppression, for thou shalt 
not fear ; and from destruction, for it shall not come near thee. 

15 Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not by me : 
whoso gathereth together against thee shall fall away to thy 

16 side. Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the fire of 
coal, and bringeth forth a weapon for his work : and I have 

17 created the waster to destroy. No weapon that is formed 
against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise 
against thee in judgment, thou shalt condemn : this is the 
heritage of the servants of Jehovah, and their righteousness is 
of me, saith Jehovah. 

LV. 1 Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and 
he that hath no money : come ye, buy, and eat ; yea, come, buy 

2 wine and milk without money, and without price. Wherefore 
do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your 
labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken, hearken unto 
me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight 

3 itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me ; hear, 
and your soul shall live : and I will make an everlasting cove- 

4 nant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I have 
given him for a witness to the peoples : a leader and commander 

5 to the peoples. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou 
knowest not ; and nations that knew not thee shall run unto 
thee : because of Jehovah thy God, and for the Holy one of 
Israel ; for he hath glorified thee. 

6 Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found : call ye upon him 

7 while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the 
unrighteous man his thoughts : and let him return unto Jehovah, 
and he will have mercy upon him ; and to our God, for he will 

8 abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts : 

9 neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah. For as the 
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than 

10 your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the 
rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth 
not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth 
and bud ; that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the 

11 eater : so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth ; 
it shall not return unto me void : but it shall accomplish that 



ISAIAH L V, L VI, I VII 



463 



which I please, and it shall prosper in that whereto I sent it. 

12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace : the 
mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into shout- 

13 ing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead 
of the thorn shall come up the cypress, and instead of the briar 
shall come up the myrtle tree : and it shall be to Jehovah for a 
name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. 

LVI. 1 Thus saith Jehovah, keep ye justice, and do righteous- 
ness : for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to 

2 be revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of 
man that layeth hold on it : that keepeth the sabbath from pro- 

3 faning it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil. And let 
not the son of the stranger that hath joined himself to Jehovah, 
speak, saying, Jehovah utterly separateth me from his people : 
neither let the eunuch say, Behold I am a dry tree. 

4 For thus saith Jehovah unto the eunuchs that shall keep my 
sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of 

5 my covenant : even unto them will I give in mine house, and 
within my walls, a place and a name better than of sons and of 
daughters ; I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not 
be cut off. 

6 Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to Jehovah, 
to serve him, and to love the name of Jehovah, to be his ser- 
vants ; every one that keepeth the sabbath from profaning it, 

7 and taketh hold of my covenant : even them will I bring to my 
holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer ; 
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon 
mine altar : for mine house shall be called an house of prayer 

8 for all peoples. This is the word of the Lord Jehovah, which 
gathereth the outcasts of Israel : — Yet will I gather others to 
him, beside those that are gathered unto him. 

9 All ye beasts of the field, come to devour, yea, all ye beasts 

10 in the forest. His watchmen are blind, they are all without 
knowledge ; they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark : dream- 

11 ing, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs, 
which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that can- 
not understand : they are all turned to their own way, every 

12 one for his gain, one and all of them. Come ye, say they, I 
will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink : 
and to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant. 

LYII. 1 The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart : 
and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righ- 
2 teous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into 



464 



ISAIAH LVII 



peace; they shall rest in their beds : each one that walked in his 

3 uprightness. But ye, draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress : 

4 the seed of the adulterer and the harlot. Against whom do ye 
sport yourselves ? against whom make ye a wide mouth, and 
put out the tongue ? are ye not children of transgression, a 

5 seed of falsehood : enflaming yourselves with idols under every 
green tree ; slaying the children in the valleys under the cliffs of 
the rocks ? Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy 
portion; they, they are thy lot: even to them hast thou poured 
a drink offering, thou hast offered a meat offering. Should I be 

7 satisfied with these things ? Upon a lofty and high mountain 
hast thou set thy bed : even thither wentest thou up to offer 

8 sacrifice. And behind the door and the door-post hast thou set 
thy remembrance : for thou hast discovered thyself to another 

t than me, and art gone up ; thou hast enlarged thy bed, and 
made thee a covenant with them ; thou lovedst their bed, where 

9 thou sawest it. And thou wentest to the king with oil, and didst 
multiply thy perfumes : and didst send thy messengers far off, and 

10 didst debase thyself even unto hell. Thou art wearied in the 
greatness of thy way ; yet saidst thou not, There is no hope : 
thou hast yet found life in thine hand ; therefore thou wast not 

11 disheartened. And of whom hast thou been afraid or feared, 
that thou hast lied, and hast not remembered me, nor laid it to 
thy heart ? have I not held my peace, and even of old, and thou 

12 fearest me not ? I will declare thy righteousness : but thy works, 

13 they shall not avail thee. When thou criest, let thy com- 
panies of idols deliver thee ; but the wind shall carry them all 
away ; a breath shall take them off : but he that putteth his 
trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy 

14 mountain. And he shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare 
the way : take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my 
people. 

15 For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth 
eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy 
place : with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, 
to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart 

16 of the contrite ones. For I will not contend for ever, neither 
will I be always wroth : for the spirit should fail before me, 

17 and the souls which I have made. For the iniquity of his 
covetousness was I wroth, and smote him : I hid me, and was 

is wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart. I 
have seen his ways, and will heal him : and I will lead him, 
19 and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners. I create 



ISAIAH LVII, LVIII 



4*5 



the fruit of the lips : Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to 

20 him that is near, saith Jehovah ; and I will heal him. But the 
wicked are like the troubled sea : for it cannot rest, and its 
waters cast up mire and dirt. 

21 There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. 

LVIII. i Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet : 
and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob 

2 their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my 
ways, as a nation that has done righteousness, and has not 
forsaken the ordinance of their God : they ask of me the ordi- 
nances of justice ; they take delight in approaching to God. 

3 Wherefore have we fasted, and thou seest not ? wherefore 
have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge ? 
Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all 

4 your labours. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to 
smite with the fist of wickedness : ye shall not fast as ye do 

5 this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. Is it such a 
fast that I have chosen, a day for a man to afflict his soul ? 
is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sack- 
cloth and ashes under him ? wilt thou call this a fast, and an 

6 acceptable day to Jehovah ? Is not this the fast that I have 
chosen ? to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the knots 
of the yoke : and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break 

7 every yoke ? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and 
that thou bring the wandering poor to thy house ? when thou 
seest the naked, that thou cover him ; and that thou hide not 
thyself from thine own flesh ? 

8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine 
health shall spring forth speedily : and thy righteousness shall 
go before thee ; the glory of Jehovah shall be thy rereward. 

9 Then shalt thou call, and Jehovah shall answer; thou shalt cry, 
and he shall say, Here I am : if thou take away from the midst 
of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking 

10 vanity. And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and 
satisfy the afflicted soul : then shall thy light rise in the dark- 

n ness, and thy thick darkness be as the noon day. And Jehovah 
shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, 
and make strong thy bones : and thou shalt be like a watered 
garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters shall not fail. 

12 And they that come of thee shall build the old waste places ; 
thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations : and 
thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, the restorer of 

13 paths to dwell in. If thou wilt turn away thy foot from the 

H H 



466 



ISAIAH L VIII, LIX. 



sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day : and wilt 
call the sabbath a delight, the holy of Jehovah, honourable ; 
and wilt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding 

14 thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words : then shalt 
thou delight thyself in Jehovah ; and I will cause thee to ride 
upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage 
of Jacob thy father : for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it. 

LIX. 1 Behold the hand of Jehovah is not shortened, that it 

2 cannot save ; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear : but your 
iniquities have separated between you and your God ; and your 

3 sins have hid his face from you, that he doth not hear. For 
your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with ini- 
quity: your lips have spoken lies, your tongue doth mutter 

4 perverseness. None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth in 
truth : they trust in vanity, and speak lies ; they conceive mis- 

5 chief, and bring forth iniquity. They hatch cockatrice' eggs, 
and weave the spider's web : he that eateth of their eggs dieth, 

6 and the crushed egg breaketh out into a viper. Their webs shall 
not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with 
their works : their works are works of iniquity, and the act of 

7 violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they 
make haste to shed innocent blood : their thoughts are thoughts 

8 of iniquity ; wasting and destruction are in their paths. The 
way of peace they know not ; and there is no justice in their 
goings : they have made them crooked paths ; whosoever goeth 

9 therein shall not know peace. Therefore is judgment far from 
us, neither doth justice overtake us : we wait for light, but 
behold darkness ; for brightness, but we walk in thick darkness. 

10 We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had 
no eyes : we stumble at noon day as in the night ; we are in 

n desolate places as dead men. We roar all like bears, and mourn 
sore like doves : we look for judgment, but there is none ; for 

12 salvation, but it is far off from us. For our transgressions are 
multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us : for our 
transgressions are with us ; and our iniquities, we know them : — ■ 

13 in transgressing and lying against Jehovah, and turning away 
backward from our God ; speaking oppression and revolt, con- 

14 ceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. And 
judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar 
off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. 

15 Yea, truth faileth ; and he that departeth from evil maketh 
himself a prey: and Jehovah saw it, and it displeased him that 

16 there was no judgment. And he saw that there was no man, 



ISAIAH LIX., LX. 



467 



and wondered that there was no intercessor : therefore his 
own arm hath brought salvation unto him ; and his righ- 

17 teousness, it sustaineth him. And he hath put on righteous- 
ness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head : 
and he hath put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, 

is and is clad with zeal as a cloak. According to their deeds, 
accordingly he will repay, wrath to his adversaries, recompence 

19 to his enemies : to the islands he will repay recompence. And 
they shall fear the name of Jehovah from the west, and his glory 
from the rising of the sun : when the enemy shall come in like a 
flood, the spirit of Jehovah shall lift up a standard against him. 

20 And a redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn 

21 from transgression in Jacob : saith Jehovah. As for me, this is 
my covenant with them, saith Jehovah ; my spirit that is upon 
thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not 
depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's 
seed, saith Jehovah, from henceforth, and for ever. 

LX. 1 Arise ! be light ! for thy light is come : and the glory of 

2 Jehovah is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall 
cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples : but Jehovah 
shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. 

3 And the nations shall come to thy light : and kings to the bright- 

4 ness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see ; 
all they gather themselves together, they come to thee : thy 
sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be carried 

5 upon the arm. Then thou shalt see and brighten up, and thine 
heart shall throb and swell : because the abundance of the sea 
shall be turned in upon thee, the forces of the nations shall come 

6 unto thee. The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the 
dromedaries of Midian and Ephah : all they from Sheba shall 
come, they shall bring gold and incense ; and they shall show 

7 forth the praises of Jehovah with joy. All the flocks of 
Kedar shall be gathered for thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall 
minister unto thee : they shall come up with acceptance on 

8 mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory. Who are 
these that fly as a cloud : and as doves to their windows ? 

9 Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshisb 
first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with 
them : unto the name of Jehovah thy God, and to the Holy One 

10 of Israel, because he hath glorified thee. And the sons of the 
stranger shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister 
unto thee : for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour 

11 have I had mercy unto thee. And thy gates shall be open con- 

h h 2 



468 



ISAIAH ZZ, LXL 



tinually ; they shall not be shut day nor night : to bring unto thee 

12 the forces of the nations, and their kings led in triumph. For 
the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish : 

13 yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. The glory of Leba- 
non shall come unto thee, the cypress, the pine tree, and the 
box together : to beautify the place of my sanctuary ; and I will 

14 make the place of my feet glorious. And the sons of them that 
afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee ; and all they that 
despised thee shall bow down to the soles of thy feet : and they 
shall call thee, The city of Jehovah, The Zion of the Holy One 

15 of Israel. Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that 
no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excel- 

16 lency, a joy of many generations. And thou shalt suck the 
milk of the nations, and shalt suck the breast of kings : and thou 
shalt know that I Jehovah am thy saviour and thy redeemer, 

17 the mighty one of Jacob. For brass I will bring gold, and for 
iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones 
iron : and I will make thy officers peace, and thine exactors 

18 righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, 
wasting nor destruction within thy borders : but thou shalt 

19 call thy walls, Salvation, and thy gates, Praise. The sun shall 
be no more thy light by day ; neither for brightness shall the 
moon give light unto thee : but Jehovah shall be unto thee an 

20 everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no 
more go down ; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself : for 
Jehovah shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy 

21 mourning shall be ended. And thy people shall be all righteous, 
they shall inherit the land for ever : the branch of my planting, 

22 the work of my hands, that I may be glorified. A little one 
shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation : I 
Jehovah will hasten it in his time. 

LXI. i The spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me ; because 
Jehovah hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the 
meek ; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to pro- 
claim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to 

2 them that are bound : to proclaim a year of grace for Jehovah, 
and a day of vengeance for our God ; to comfort all that mourn : 

3 to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give them a 
diadem for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of 
praise for the spirit of heaviness : and they shall be called 
oaks of righteousness, the planting of Jehovah, that he might 

4 be glorified. And they shall build the old wastes, they shall 
raise up the former desolations : and they shall repair the 



IS AT AH LXI.j LXIL 



469 



5 waste cities, the desolations of many generations. And strangers 
shall stand and feed your flocks : and the sons of the alien shall be 

6 your ploughmen and your vine-dressers. And ye shall be named 
the priests of Jehovah ; men shall call you the ministers of our 
God : ye shall eat the riches of the nations, and in their glory 

7 shall ye boast yourselves. For your shame ye shall have 
double ; and for confusion they shall rejoice in their portion : 
therefore in their land shall they possess the double ; ever- 

8 lasting joy shall be unto them. For I Jehovah, love justice, 
I hate robbery and wrong : and I will give their hire truly, and 

9 I will make an everlasting covenant with them. And their 
seed shall be known among the nations, and their offspring 
among the peoples : all that see them shall acknowledge them, 
that they are the seed which Jehovah hath blessed. 

10 I will greatly rejoice in Jehovah, my soul shall be joyful in 
my God ; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salva- 
tion, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness : as 
a bridegroom putteth on a priestly crown, and as a bride 

11 adorneth herself with her jewels. For as the earth bringeth 
forth her bud, and as the garden causeth its plant to spring 
forth ; so the Lord Jehovah will cause righteousness and praise 
to spring forth before all the nations. 

LXII. 1 For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusa- 
lem's sake I will not rest : until the righteousness thereof go forth 
as a shining light, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that 

2 burneth. And the nations shall see thy righteousness, and all 
kings thy glory : and thou shalt be called by a new name, 

3 which the mouth of Jehovah shall name. And thou shalt be a 
crown of glory in the hand of Jehovah, and a royal diadem in 

4 the hand of thy God. Thou shalt no more be called, For- 
saken, neither shall thy land any more be called, Desolate ; but 
thou shalt be named, My own Delight, and thy land, the 
Married One : for Jehovah delighteth in thee, and thy land 

5 shall be married. For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so 
shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth 

6 over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee. I have set 
watchmen upon thy walls, 0 Jerusalem, which shall never hold 
their peace day nor night ; ye remembrancers of Jehovah, keep 

7 not silence : and give ye him no rest, till he establish, and till he 

8 make J erusalem a praise in the earth. Jehovah hath sworn by 
his right hand, and by the arm of his strength : Surely I will no 
more give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies, and the sons 
of the stranger shall not drink thy wine, for the which thou 



470 



ISAIAH LXII. y LXIII. 



9 hast laboured. But they that have gathered it shall eat it, 
and praise Jehovah : and they that have brought it together 
shall drink it in the courts of my holiness. 

10 Go through, go through the gates ; prepare ye the way of the 
people : cast up, cast up the highway ; gather out the stones ; 

n lift up a standard for the peoples. Behold, Jehovah hath pro- 
claimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of 
Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh : behold, his reward is with 

12 him, and his recompence before him. And they shall call them, 
The holy people, The redeemed of Jehovah : and thou shalt 
be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken. 

LXIII. i Who is this that cometh from Edom ? with purple gar- 
ments from Bozrah ? This that is glorious in his apparel, 
travelling in the greatness of his strength ? 1 I that speak in 

2 righteousness, mighty to save.' Wherefore art thou red in thine 
apparel : and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat ? 

3 ' I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the nations there was 
none with me ; and I trod them in mine anger, and trampled them 
in my fury : and their blood was sprinkled upon my garments, 

4 and I have stained all my raiment. For the day of vengeance 

5 is in mine heart : and the year of my redeemed is come. And I 
looked, but there was none to help ; and I wondered, but there 
was none to uphold : therefore mine own arm brought salvation 

6 unto me ; and my fury, it upheld me. And I trod down 
the nations in mine anger, and made them drunk in my fury : 
and I made their blood to run down to the earth.' 

7 I will mention the lovingkindnesses of Jehovah, and 
the praises of Jehovah, according to all that Jehovah hath 
bestowed on us : and the great goodness toward the house 
of Israel, which he hath bestowed on them according to his 
mercies, and according to the multitude of his lovingkindnesses. 

s For he said, Surely they are my people, children that will not 
9 lie : so he was their saviour. In all their affliction he was afflicted, 
and the angel of his presence saved them : in his love and in his 
pity he redeemed them ; and he bare them, and carried them all 

10 the days of old. But they rebelled, and vexed his holy spirit : 
therefore he was turned to be their enemy, he fought against 

11 them. Then he remembered the days of old, Moses, and his 
people : saying, Where is he that brought them up out of the 
sea with the shepherd of his flock ? where is he that put his 

12 holy spirit within him ? That led them by the right hand of 
Moses with his glorious arm : dividing the water before them, to 
make him an everlasting name ? That led them through the 



ISAIAH LXIII, LXIV. 



+7* 



u deep : as an horse in the plain they did not stumble ? As cattle 
that go down into the valley, the spirit of Jehovah made them 
to rest: so didst thou lead thy people, to make thyself a 

15 glorious name. Look down from heaven, and behold from the 
habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory : where are thy zeal 
and thy mighty deeds, the yearning of thy heart and thy mercies 

16 toward me ? are they restrained ? For Thou art our father, 
though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us 
riot : thou, 0 Jehovah, art our father ; our redeemer is thy name 

17 from everlasting. 0 Jehovah, why dost thou make us to wander 
from thy ways, and harclenest our hearts from thy fear ? Return 

is for thy servants' sake, the tribes of thine inheritance. The 
people of thy holiness have possessed it but a little while : our 

19 adversaries have trodden down thy sanctuary. We are become 
like those over whom thou never barest rule, who were not called 

LXIV. 1 by thy name : Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, 
that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might quake 

2 at thy presence ! As the fire burneth the stubble, as the fire 
maketh the water to boil, that thou wouldest make thy name 
known to thine adversaries, that the nations might tremble at 

3 thy presence ! In doing terrible things which we looked not 
for, that thou wouldst come down, that the mountains might 

4 quake at thy presence ! For since the beginning of the world 
men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear : neither hath 
the eye seen any God, beside thee, who will do such things for 

5 him that waiteth for him. Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and 
worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways : 
behold, thou art wroth, for we have sinned ; we have long 

6 continued therein, and shall we be saved ? And we are all 
as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses as filthy 
rags: and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like 

7 the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth 
upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of 
thee : for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed 

8 us, because of our iniquities. But now, 0 Jehovah, thou 
art our father : we are the clay, and thou our potter ; and 

9 we are all the work of thy hand. Be not wroth very sore, 
0 Jehovah, neither remember iniquity for ever : behold, 

10 see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people. Thy holy cities 
are a wilderness : Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desola- 

11 tion. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers 
praised thee, is burned up with fire : and all our pleasant 

12 things are laid waste. Wilt tbou refrain thyself for these 



47 2 



ISAIAH IXV. 



things, 0 Jehovah ? wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us 
very sore. 

LXV. i I have answered them that asked not for me ; I was at 
hand for them that sought me not : I said, Behold me, behold me, 

2 unto a nation that called not on my name. I have spread out 
my hands all the day unto a rebellious people ; which walketh in 

3 a way that is not good, after their own thoughts : a people that 
provoketh me to anger continually to my face ; that sacrificeth 

4 in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick : which sit 
among the graves, and lodge in the monuments ; which eat 
swine's flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their 

5 vessels : which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me ; 
for I am holier than thou. These are smoke in my nose, a fire 

6 that burneth all the day. Behold, it is written before me: I will 
not keep silence till I have recompensed, even recompensed into 

7 their bosom, your iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers 
together, saith Jehovah, which have burned incense upon the 
mountains, and blasphemed me upon the hills : and I will 

8 measure their former work into their bosom. Thus saith 
Jehovah, As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one 
saith, Destroy it not ; for a blessing is in it : so will I do for 

9 my servants' sakes, that I may not destroy them all. And I 
will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheri- 
tor of my mountains : and mine elect shall inherit it, and my 

10 servants shall dwell there. And Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, 
and the valley of Achor a place for the herds to lie down in : for 

n my people that have sought me. But ye are they that forsake 
Jehovah, that forget my holy mountain : that prepare a table 
for Fortune, and that furnish a drink offering unto Destiny. 

12 Therefore I have destined you to the sword, and ye shall all 
bow down to the slaughter : because when I called, ye did not 
answer; when I spake, ye did not hear; but did evil before 
mine eyes, and did choose that wherein I delighted not. 

is Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, my servants 
shall eat, but ye shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, 
but ye shall be thirsty : behold, my servants shall rejoice, but 

14 ye shall be ashamed : behold, my servants shall sing for joy of 
heart, but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for 

15 anguish of spirit. And ye shall leave your name for a curse 
unto my chosen ; for the Lord Jehovah shall slay thee, and call 

16 his servants by another name : that he who blesseth himself 
in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth ; and he that, 
sweareth in the earth, shall swear by the Grod of truth ; because 



ISAIAH LXV., LXVI 



473 



the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are bid from 
17 mine eyes. For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: 

and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind, 
is But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create : for, 

behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. 

19 And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people : and the 
voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of 

20 crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor 
an old man that hath not filled his days : for the child shall die 
an hundred years old; and the sinner an hundred years old 

21 shall be accursed. And they shall build houses, and inhabit 
them : and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. 

22 They shall not build, and another inhabit ; they shall not plant, 
and another eat : for as the days of a tree shall be the days 
of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their 

23 hands. They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for 
trouble : for they are the seed of the blessed of Jehovah, and 

24 their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass, that 
before they call, I will answer : and while they are yet speak- 

25 ing I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, 
and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock ; and dust shall be 
the serpent's meat : they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my 
holy mountain, saith Jehovah. 

LXYI. i Thus saith Jehovah, The heaven is my throne, and the 
earth is my footstool : where is the house that ye build unto 

2 me ? and where is the place of my rest ? For all those things 
did mine hand make, and they all were, saith Jehovah : but to 
this man will I look, to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, 

3 and trembleth at my word. Slaying an ox, killing a man ; sacri- 
ficing a lamb, breaking a dog's neck; offering an oblation, 
offering swine's blood ; burning incense, blessing an idol : 
yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul de- 

4 lighteth in their abominations. I also will choose to mock 
them, and will bring their fears upon them ; because when I 
called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: 
but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I 
delighted not. 

5 Hear the word of Jehovah, ye that tremble at his word: 
your brethren that hated you, and cast you out for my 
name's sake, say, Let Jehovah be glorified, and let us see your 

6 joy ; — but they shall be ashamed. A voice of noise from the 
city, a voice from the temple, a voice of Jehovah, that rendereth, 

7 recompence to his enemies. Before she travailed, she brought 



474 ISAIAH LXVI. 

forth : before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child. 

8 Who hath heard such a thing ? who hath seen such things ? 
shall a land be brought forth in one day ? or shall a nation be 
born at once ? for Zion hath travailed and at once brought 

9 forth her children. Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause 
to bring forth ? saith Jehovah : shall I cause to bring forth, and 
shut the womb ? saith thy God. 

10 Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that 
love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her: 

n that ye may suck, and be satisfied, from the breasts of her con- 
solations : that ye may milk out, and be delighted, from the 
abundance of her glory. 

12 For thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will extend peace to her 
like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like an over-flowing 
stream : and ye shall suck, ye shall be borne upon the side, 

13 and be dandled upon the knees. As one whom his mother 
comforteth, so will I comfort you : and ye shall be comforted 

14 in Jerusalem. And ye shall see, and your heart shall rejoice, 
and your. bones shall flourish like an herb: and the hand of 
Jehovah shall be known toward his servants, and his indigna- 

15 tion toward his enemies. For, behold, Jehovah will come with 
fire, and his chariots like a whirlwind : to render his anger with 

16 fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by 
his sword will Jehovah plead with all flesh : and the . slain 

17 of Jehovah shall be many. They that sanctify themselves, and 
purify themselves, for the gardens, following one in the midst, 
eating swine's flesh and the abomination and the mouse, shall 

is be consumed together, saith Jehovah. For I know their works 
and their thoughts ; the time cometh that I will gather all nations 

19 and tongues : and they shall come, and see my glory. And I 
will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of 
them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw 
the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have 
not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory ; and they shall 

20 declare my glory among the Gentiles. And they shall bring all 
your brethren for an offering unto Jehovah, out of all nations, 
upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, 
and upon dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith 
Jehovah : as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean 

21 vessel into the house of Jehovah. And I will also take of 

22 them for priests and for Levites, saith Jehovah. For as the 
new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall 
remain before me, saith Jehovah, so shall your reed and your 



ISAIAH LXVI 



475 



name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from new 
moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, shall all flesh 
come to worship before me, saith Jehovah. And they shall 
go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have 
rebelled against me : for their worm shall not die, neither 
shall their fire be quenched ; and they shall be an abhorring 
unto all flesh. 



INDEX. 



Abraham — history of, taught the 
lesson of true sacrifice, 12, note ; 
universal blessing through his 
seed, 107 ; grant of Canaan to, 
187. 

Ahaz — accession of, a prelude to 
anarchy, 51, 95 ; his incredulity, 
101 ; seeks Assyria's protection, 
110 ; sets up the worship of Moloch 
and shuts up the Temple, 120, 
267 ; his visit to Damascus, 127 ; 
captivity of the Jews in his reign, 
147 ; ' Degrees of Ahaz,' 326. 

Ahijah — points out Jeroboam for 
king of the ten tribes, 8 ; enduring 
results of this act, 144. 

Alexander, Dr. — subjugations of Ju- 
dah from the time of Ahaz, 110 ; 
the genuine productions of Isaiah, 
157, note; his notion of inspira- 
tion, 226. 

Altakeh — north of Lachish, battle 
between Sennacherib andTirhakeh 
at, 305. 

Amos — his relation to the schools of 
the prophets, 6 ; title of the book 
of, 22. 

Arabia — tribes of, 232 ; conquest of, 

by Sennacherib, 234. 
Ariel — applied to the city of David, 

270 ; an enigmatical name, 280, 

284. 

Aristocracy — consequences of selfish- 
ness in the Hebrew, 52 ; lawless- 
ness of, 38, 129; land tenure of, 
65 ; sensuality of, 69 ; political 
power of, 240 ; rapacity of, 277, 
278. 

Arnold — illustration of divine judg- 
ment in the fate of Pompeii, &c, 
34. 

Aroer — places of that name, on the 

east of the Jordan, 208. 
Ashdod— sieges of, 194, 219. 
Assyria — its despotism, 9 ; invades 



J udah, 74 ; Ephraim repeatedly 
subdued by, 100 ; the 1 Assyrian 
razor,' 112 ; the God of, 132 ; 
annals of the Assyrian kings, 131, 
168, 170, 193 ; march of the Assy- 
rian army on Jerusalem, 138 ; de- 
struction of the Assyrian empire 
foretold, 134, 165; the 'Assyrian 
Canon,' account of, 235, note. 
Assyrian Inscriptions, 131, 171, 173; 
of Tiglath-Pileser, 96, 334, notes; 
of Shalmaneser, 218 ; of Sargon, 
193, 219 ; of Sennacherib, 194, 
239, 257, 303 ; of Ezar-haddon, 
307, note. 

Avites — the original inhabitants of 
Philistia, 184. 

Bahylon — type of sheer force, 130, 
171; 'Burden' of, 154, 178; 
king of, a vassal of Assyria, 169 ; 
Hebrew notices of, 168 ; extent of 
its power, 168 ; plundered by Sen- 
nacherib, 169 ; by Merodach-Bala- 
dan, 170; desolation of, 179, 182; 
enigmatical name of, 228 ; revolt 
of, trom Assyria, 318. 

Bacon — On the fulfilment of pro- 
phecy, 217. 

Berosus — describes Pul as king of 
the Chaldseans, 166 ; conquest of 
Babylon by the Medes, 169 ; Me- 
rodach-Baladan, 330. 

Branch — 'Branch of Jehovah,' im- 
port of the phrase, 56, 57 : ' Branch 
of Jesse,' type of the Eighteous 
King, 139. 

Bunsen — character of German criti- 
cism, 161, note ; personality of na- 
tional societies, 205, note ; defence 
of Niebuhr's policy in Italy, 338, 
note. 

Burden — Burden of Babylon, 154 ; 
of Philistia, 184 ; of Moab, 197 ; of 
' Damascus, 206 ; of Egypt, 212 ; of 



47 8 



INDEX. 



the Desert of the Sea, 228; of 
Dumah and Arabia, 232 ; of the 
' Beasts of the South,' 283. 
Burke — the advocate of justice and 
order, 10 ; his study of history 
and the Bible, 143, note. 

Oalneh — situation of, east of Baby- 
lon, 130. 

Calvin — his notions of the divine 
attributes, 133. 

Canaanites — old gods of the, 40 ; 
moral degeneracy of the, 186. 

Caphtorim — inhabitants of Philistia, 
184 ; origin of the, 185. 

Carchemish — position of, on the 
Euphrates, 130. 

Chaucer — advice of, 177 ; nobility of 
rank and nobility of character, 291. 

Church— < Church of England,' 4; 
collision of Church and State, 85 ; 
Church of the Hebrews, 148 ; the 
Church and the world, 149, 151 ; 
the Church and the nation, 377. 

Cicero — a representative of law, 10 ; 
on divination, 226 ; denunciation 
of Catiline, 240 ; on the manifes- 
tation of God in nature, 372. 

Clergy — duties of the, in the state, 4. 

Cobden — his services to constitu- 
tional politics, 145. 

Coleridge — ' natural right' of pro- 
perty, 68, note; on epic and dra- 
matic poetry, 126; on imagination, 
134 ; composition of ' KublaKhan," 
229. 

Commerce — moral effects of, 52. 

Commonwealth — ideal of the perfect 
commonwealth, 39. 

Conquest — law of conquest and exter- 
mination, 186; conquest of Mexico, 
185; conquest of India, 188. 

Criticism — negative and hypothetical 
criticism, 18, 19 ; useful results of 
the sceptical criticism, 157 ; scien- 
tific and unscientific methods of, 
158, 159. 

Cush — name of Ethiopia, and of 
Arabia Deserta, 146. 

Cyrus — name explained as titular, 
351, note ; M oiler's hypothesis 
respecting it, 358, 359, and notes , 
Schegg's explanation, 358, 359. 

Damascus — made tributary by David, 

97 ; Burden of, 206 ; as the capital 

of Syria, 208. 
Delitzsch — on the genuineness of the 

prophecies, 173, 225, 275, 348, 

354, note. 

Demetrius — description of Ithome 
by, 60. 



Demosthenes — office of the political 

adviser, 3, 10. 
Dreams — mental operations in, 86. 

Edom — revolt of, from Judah, in the 
reign of Ahaz, 296 ; as a mystical 
name for Assyria, 297. 

Egypt — alliance of, with Samaria, 
111, 212; joins Philistia against 
Sennacherib, 193, 208 ; in amity 
with Assyria, 213; dynasties of, 
212 ; in a state of anarchy, 214; 
future regeneration of, 215 ; Egypt 
under the Greek rule, 217. 

Elam — designation of Persia and Me- 
dia, 146, 242. 

Elath — a port on the Eed Sea, reco- 
vered by Uzziah, 31. 

Elulaeus — king of Tyre in the time 
of Hezekiah, 257 ; his flight to 
Cyprus, 303. 

Ephraim — confederate with Syria, 
116 ; turbulent character of, 128; 
early predominance of, among the 
ten tribes, 141 ; wars with Judah, 
142; reunion with Judah prophe- 
sied, 146 ; alliance of, with Da- 
mascus, 207 ; ' Drunkards of 
Ephraim,' 277. 

Ethbaal — king of Tyre, father of 
Jezebel, 255. 

Ethiopia — alliance of, with Egypt 
and Judah against Assyria, 208, 
210. 

Euphrates — emblem of the Assy- 
rian power, 115 ; as overflow- 
ing the land of Immanuel, 168, 
228. 

Ewald — on the vocation of the pro- 
phets, 78 ; character of his criti- 
cism, 160, 162 ; on Israel's place 
in history, 223. 

Gaza — called Minoa, built by Minos, 
184 — captured by Sargon, 193. 

Germans — speculative genius of the, 
16 ; characteristics of German cri- 
ticism, 161. 

Gesenius — lucid expositions of, 162. 

Gibbon — relief of Orleans by iEtius, 
192, note. 

Gladstone — on constitutional liberty, 
343. 

Grattan — first speech of, in the House 
of Commons, 29. 

Greeks — respect of the, for law and 
free speech, 2 ; national religion of 
the, 48 ; contribution of the, to the 
education of the world, 11, 107, 
228. 

Grote — rhythmical discourse of the 
Greeks, 28 ; principle of security 



INDEX. 



479 



of ancient societies, 52, note ; Xeno- 
phon's march, 137, note ; the supre- 
macy of Persia, 167, note; on the 
genuineness of the Platonic Dia- 
logues, 175, note. 
Grotius — principle of prophetic in- 
terpretation, 75, note; refers the 
1 smiting of the Euphrates' to the 
division of the Assyrian empire, 
148; critical insight of, 155, 164,281. 

Hamath — on the Orontes, capital of 
Upper Syria, 130, 146. 

Hebrew — life of the, 13 ; his idea of 
creation, 13 ; of divine govern- 
ment and history, 14. 

Language — idioms of the, 40, 

43, 56. 

Idyll — source of its imagery, 

59. 

Nation — characteristic of the, 

1 1 ; taught the knowledge of God, 
12; mission of the, 13, 46 ; pro- 
phetic genius of the, 15 ; set forth 
man's relation to God, 107; regard 
of the, for law, 129 ; tribal rival- 
ries of the, 141, 142 ; cause of dis- 
ruption of the, 144. 

Oratory — rhythmical charac- 
ter of, 27 ; parallels from that of 
other nations, 28, 29. 

Poetry — structure of, 25 ; 

illustrations of, 26. 

Polity — tendencies of the, 

48 ; feudal character of the, 65. 

Women — social position of 

the, 53, 55 ; social influence of the, 
291. 

Herodotus — date of the overthrow of 
Assyria, 148 ; capture of Babylon, 
225 ; his visit to Tyre, 256 ; defeat 
of Sennacherib, 306, 316. 

Hezekiah — made Philistia tributary 
to Judah, 193 ; his political cha- 
racter, 237 ; pays tribute to Sen- 
nacherib, 238, 239 ; his measures 
in view of the siege, 246 ; sickness 
of, 321 ; his fear of death, 322 ; 
the 'sign' of his recovery, 324; 
psalm of, 327 ; embassy of Mero- 
dach-Baladan to, 332 ; his cha- 
racter, 340. » 

High places — worship of Jehovah 
in the, long sanctioned, 5 ; wor- 
ship of Jehovah turned to idolatry 
in the, 40. 

Hiram — King of Tyre, alliance of, 
with David and Solomon, 254. 

Husbandman — parable of the, 279. 

Immanuel — Messianic application of 
the name, 104, 106 ; expectations 



of an Immanuel by the Greeks and 
Eomans, 106 ; the name referred 
to Hezekiah, 122. 

Inspiration — popular notions of, 155 ; 
biblical meaning of, 226 and note ; 
evidences of, 261. 

Isaiah — his consecration to the pro- 
phetic office, 17, 77 ; his style, 24 ; 
genius, 25 ; his oratory, 27, 103 ; 
prophesies national calamities, 51 ; 
denunciation of avarice and luxury, 
53 ; his self-dedication, 83, 85, 90 ; 
his vision, 79, 88 ; address of, to 
Ahaz, 100; symbolic acts of, 113 ; 
policy of, under Hezekiah, 222 ; his 
opposition to the Egyptian alliance, 
221, 284; the political 'Watch- 
man,' 230 ; the historian of the 
reign of Uzziab, 302 ; his prediction 
of Sennacherib's death, 311; his 
death, Jewish tradition of, 388. 

Isaiah,ItooZ; of — its unity, 15 ; arrange- 
ment of the, 16, 17 ; earliest date 
in the, 17; title of the, 22; epic 
unity of the, 125 ; question of the 
authorship of certain prophecies 
in the, 154—178, 205, 225, 259, 
266, 274; song of the redeemed 
captives, 180 ; genuineness of the 
last chapters, 345 ; arguments 
against the, from words and senti- 
ments, 348 ; from Messianic beliefs, 
350 ; from the name of Cyrus, 351; 
arguments in favour of Isaiah's 
authorship, 352 ; a version of the, 
393 ; what a translation should be, 
393. 

Israel — destiny of, 93 ; place of, in 
history, 223. 

Jeremiah — conduct and advice of, to 
the Jews, 9 ; the book of, 20 ; 
prophecy of, concerning Moab, 205 ; 
defence of his political character by 
Niebuhr, 222, note. 

Jerusalem — threatened siege of, 33 ; 
a faithless city, 37 ; topography of, 
99, 243 ; ancient roads leading to, 
136 ; siege of, by Sennacherib, 237, 
239 ; water supply of, 243. 

Jotham — policy of, 32 ; idolatry pre- 
valent in his time, 40, 48 ; cha- 
racter of his time, 79, 95. 

Judah — sources of her strength and 
weakness, 50 ; alarm of, at the con- 
federacy of Syria and Ephraim, 
116; desolation of, 268; restora- 
tion of peace to, 271. 

Judea — ancient fertility of, 61. 

Kir. — position of, between the Cau- 
casus and the Caspian, 242. 



INDEX. 



Knobel — lucid expositions of, 162 ; 
on the comeliness of the Ethio- 
pians, 210, note. 

Laghish — position of, north of Jeru- 
salem, 136 ; rendezvous of the 
Assyrian armies, 237, 266 ; descrip- 
tion of, 304, note ; taken by Senna- 
cherib, 305. 

Language — an expression of national 
character, 40. 

Law — law and free speech, 2 ; the 
spirit of, 35 ; law of land tenure, 
66 ; law of entail, 67 ; law of con- 
quest, 186. 

Levi — office of the tribe of, in the 
nation, 5. 

Leviathan — an emblem of Assyria 
and Egypt, 273. 

Lowth — structure of Hebrew poetry, 
25 ; character of his work on Isaiah, 
156, 180, 221. 

Luther — on the phrase, * Jehovah 
said,' 98 ; on election and grace, 
189. 

Lysias — on the autochthony of the 
Greeks, 63, note. 

Maurice— on the epic character of 
the prophetic writings, 125 ; his 
appreciation of the spirit of pro- 
phecy, 160. 

Mazzini — poetic character of his ora- 
tory, 103. 

Medes — masters of Babylon, 170 ; 
indifference of the,' to gold, 172,. 
179; revolt of the, from Assyria, 
318. 

Melicartha — god of Phoenicia, Her- 
cules, 256. 

Merodach-Baladan — conquered by 
Sargon and Sennacherib, 169; re- 
covers Babylon by the aid of the 
Medes, 170 ; embassy from, to 
Hezekiah, 332. 

Meroe — a name of Ethiopia, 194, 213. 

Messiah — early expectations of a, by 
the Hebrews, 105 ; by other nations, 
106, 109, note ; was to be of David's 
line, 121 ; the Messianic idea the 
kevstone of the arch of prophecy, 
380. 

Mieah— book of, 20, 22; Messianic 
prophecy of, 106 ; Zion's captivity, 
167. 

Michmash— position of, north of 
Judah, 136, 138. 

Mill (J. S.)— on the < Order of Pro- 
phets,' 2, note. 

Milton— 11, 29, 36, note, 59, 155; his 
idea of England's mission, 335, note. 



Moab— country of, 197; history of, 
198 ; national worship of, 199 ; 
terrors of invasion felt by, 200 ; 
pride of, 203 ; fulfilment of judg- 
ments on, 204 ; personification of, 
by the prophets, 205. 

Moses — exclusiveness in the legis- 
lation of, 47, 53 ; land-laws of, 66 ; 
foundation of his polity, 89 ; com- 
mand of to exterminate the Philis- 
tines, 185, 186 ; his soaring Moab, 
198. 

Miiller (K. O.) — on mythology, 44, 

note. 

Niebtjhr — the interpretation of an- 
cient books, 19 ; oratorical style in 
writing, 30; defence of the political 
counsels of Jeremiah by, 222, note ; 
the ancient oracles, 227, note ; con- 
dition of Germany, 249 ; of Prussia, 
250 ; providence in the history of 
nations, 319 ; his conduct in Italy, 
337. 

Nineveh — capital of Assyria, 165. 

Pad i — king of Ekron, delivered up to 
Hezekiah in irons, 147, 195, 303; 
delivered by Sennacherib, 239, 304. 

Pathros — Thebais, or Upper Egypt, 
146. 

Pekah — 24 ; invades Judah, 96 ; alli- 
ance of, with Eezin, 115 ; his origin, 
100 ; assassination of, by Hoshea, 
110. 

Petra— the chief city of Edom, 202. 

Philistia— original inhabitants of, 
184 ; their wars with Israel, 190, 
191; invaded by Saigon, 193; by 
Sennacherib, 195, 293. 

Phoenicia — description of, 253, 254 ; 
trade and commerce of, 255 ; colo- 
nies of, 256 ; pelty kings of, 262. 

Plato — the law of degeneracy in com- 
monwealths, 149, note. 

Prichard (Dr.) — the formation of lan- 
guages, 44, note. 

Prophecy — repeated fulfilment of, 75, 
227; generalization of principles 
in Hebrew prophecy, 171; com- 
pared with the ancient oracles, 
229 ; prophecy, national and uni- 
versal, 366. 

Piophet — original meaning of the 
words WO!), TrpofrjTrjg, 10, 92. 

Prophets — origin of the order, 5 ; 
schools of the, 6 ; as political coun- 
sellors, 7 ; defenders of law, 9 ; as 
God's spokesmen, 10 ; character of 
their writings, 20 ; their faith in 
the moral government of the world, 



INDEX. 



35 ; their longings for universal 
brotherhood, 47. 

Eahab — a designation of Egypt, 284. 
Religion — the forms and the spirit 
of, 35. 

Rezin — king of Syria, 24 ; alliance of, 
with Pekah, 96, 115 ; slain by 
Tiglath-Pileser, 110. 

Eevelation — objective reality of, 87 ; 
true meaning of, 260. 

Romans — national religion of the, 
48; temperate habits of the early 
Romans, 69 ; taught law and 
municipal government, 107, 228. 

Sacrifice — abandonment of, 45, note; 
atonement by, 381 ; the perfect 
sacrifice, 384. 

Samuel — president of the schools of 
the prophets, 6 ; last of the Judges, 
7 ; his conduct to Saul, 8. 

Sargon — campaign of, against Ju- 
dah, 136 ; assumes the title of 
'Lord of Babylon,' 169; the 
' sweeper away of Samaria,' 182 ; 
invades Philistia, 193 ; invades 
Egypt, 213; fouuder of Khorsabad, 
218 ; his campaigns and conquests, 
219. 

Sennacherib — captivity of the Jews 
by, 147 ; conquest of Babylon by, 
169 ; invasion of Philistia by, 194, 
303 ; summons Jerusalem to capi- 
tulate, 239, 312 ; invades Phoenicia, 
257 : defeats the Egyptian and 
Ethiopian army at Altakeh, 305 ; 
his retreat, 306 ; war of, with 
Babylon, 330. 

Sevechus — king of Egypt, in the 
time of Sargon, 208. 

Shakspeare — illustrations from, 29, 
41, 59, 174, 368; 32, 36, 51, 93, 
138, notes. 

Shalmaneser — siege of Samaria by, 
197, 212, 219 ; date of his reign, 218. 

Shear-Jashub — a symbolic name, 99, 
104, 105. 

Shebna — opposed by Isaiah, 213, 214; 
advocates alliance with Egypt, 220 ; 
Hezekiah's chief minister, 220, 238 ; 
his policy defeated, 240 ; replaced 
by Eliakim, 241 ; probable fate of, 
247, 260. 

Sibmah — a city of Moab, near Hesh- 
bon, 203, 204. 

Sidon — most ancient city of the Phoe- 
nicians, 253 ; extensive commerce 
of, 254, 257. 

Siloah — pool of, 115, note, 245 ; the 
fetching of water from, on the 
feast of tabernacles, 152. 



Slavery — the Jews sold into, at Da- 
mascus, 96 ; and to the Grecians by 
the Tyrians, 147, 255. 

Socrates — admonition of, to his dis- 
ciples, 84 ; his hopes of the future, 
149. 

St. Paul — message of, to the Athe- 
^nians, 11, 84; the brotherhood of 
the Church, 149 ; the revelation 
of the mystery of divine grace 
190. 

Strabo — water supply of Jerusalem, 
245, note; his account of Tyre, 
258. 

Synagogues — organization of, 5. 
Syria — confederate with Ephraim, 
116, 207. 

Tabernacles — oblation of water on 
the feast of, 152. 

Tarshish — ships of, 49, note ; descrip- 
tion of, 250. 

Temple — description of the, 80 ; the 
scene of great events, 82 ; proces- 
sions to the, 270, 288. 

Tense — use of the perfect for the 
future, 23, 43, 124, 136, 236. 

Teraphim — household gods of the 
Hebrews, 48. 

Tiglath-Pileser — conquest of Syria 
by, 110, 127 ; Galilee wasted by, 
118 ; title assumed by, 168. 

Tirhakeh— king of Ethiopia, 206 ; his 
alliance sought by Hezekiah's 
ministers, 278 ; defeat at Altakeh, 
305. 

Trinity — the doctrine of the, fore- 
shadowed, 91. 

Tyre — besieged by Sargon, 219; com- 
mercial importance of, 254 ; history 
of, 257 ; Isaiah's prophecy concern- 
ing, 259 ; merchant princes of, 
261 ; harsh government of, towards 
subject states, 262 ; ruin and re- 
storation of, 264. 

Uzziah — policy and able reign of, 31, 
32 ; idolatry prevalent in his time, 
40, 48 ; his assumption of the 
priestly office, 83 ; history of his 
reign written by Isaiah, 302 ; per- 
haps head of an alliance against 
Assyria, 334, note. 

Vineyard — song of the, 60 ; a type 
of the Hebrew nation, 62 ; modes 
of valuing a, 112. 

Vitringa — on the parable of the vine- 
yard, 62 ; on the meaning of fire, 
90 ; merits and defects of his criti- 
cisms, 155; remarks of, on Isaiah's 



i i 



482 



INDEX. 



style, 176 ; on the 'Angel of Je- 
hovah,' 375. 

Wordsworth — his arrangement of 
his poems, 17 ; plan of the ' Even- 
ing Walk,' 19, note; on 'seeing 
into the life of things,' 85. 



Xerxes — answer of the Spartan king 
to, 1. 

Zion — site of, 181, 243; 'daughter 

of Zion,' 37, 55, 312. 
Zschokke — results of the French 

occupation of Switzerland, 252. 



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